OF MANY THINGS 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 Ph: (212) 581-4640; Fax: (212) 399-3596 e were an NBC family, the editorial approach had to be Subscriptions: (800) 627-9533 even during the heyday of scrupulously balanced. Above all, it had www.americamedia.org facebook.com/americamag WWalter Cronkite. Every to get the story right in some objective twitter.com/americamag night at 7:00 we’d take our seats in the sense. living room in order to learn what had Broadcast journalism still exists to President and Editor in Chief Matt Malone, S.J. happened that day in places far afield create mass markets for advertisers. But Executive Editors from Cape Cod. “Don’t you want to because of the proliferation of cable Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy know what’s going on in the world?” news channels, not to mention online Managing Editor Kerry Weber my grandmother would ask on the rare news sites, those same networks now Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. occasion when I was watching a movie build those markets not by bringing Senior Editor and Chief Correspondent Kevin Clarke and didn’t want to change the channel. together different demographic groups Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. First it was John Chancellor, then Tom but by severing them from one another Executive Editor, America Films Brokaw. The CBS Evening News may and serving up that slice of the pie to Jeremy Zipple, S.J. have led the ratings and Mr. Cronkite their customers. So Fox or MSNBC Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. might have been the “most trusted will say to the Widget Corporation that Associate Editor and Vatican Correspondent Gerard O’Connell it “owns” a specific demographic. It is a man in America” in poll after poll, but Associate Editor and Director of Digital that didn’t mean people distrusted narrow, demographically homogenous Strategy Sam Sawyer, S.J. Mr. Chancellor. We all trusted these audience, to be sure, but it just so Senior Editor Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. (mostly) men to tell us the truth. happens to be the demographic that Associate Editors Ashley McKinless, Olga Segura Amazing, isn’t it, that so many buys widgets. This might be a successful Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., Joseph McAuley would trust so few with so much? Some business model, but it greatly enfeebles Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder say it was a “more innocent time.” I the public discourse, for this strategy Editorial Assistant Zachary Davis suspect, though, that any innocence or is either a cause of, or deeply complicit Columnists Helen Alvaré, John J. Conley, S.J., naïveté Gram and her generation once in, the political polarization of the Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, possessed had been stolen long before electorate. Margot Patterson, Nathan Schneider, Robert David by the most violent century in history. A similar approach is at work in Sullivan On the other hand, there was a shared political campaigns. Candidates know Correspondents John Carr (Washington), An- thony Egan, S.J., and Russell Pollitt, S.J. (Johannes- sense of identity then, perhaps the that what matters most is who votes on burg), Jim McDermott, S.J. (Los Angeles), Timothy result of that shared history, or of some election day and getting those people Padgett (Miami), Steven Schwankert (Beijing), popular mythology or civic religion. But to the polls. Campaigns no longer do David Stewart, S.J. (London), Judith Valente (Chicago) the sense of community was also the this by building as large a network of Moderator, Catholic Book Club result of basic market forces. supporters as possible. The capabilities Kevin Spinale, S.J. Back in the day, as Gram used to say, of today’s complex computer modeling Editor, The Jesuit Post Michael Rossmann, S.J. Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, allow candidates to focus instead on Editorial e-mail [email protected] who were mirror ideological opposites, the minority of true supporters they both watched Walter Cronkite. Yes, need in order to be first past the post on Publisher and Chief Financial Officer Edward G. Spallone Deputy Publisher Rosa M. they trusted him. But broadcast election day. Del Saz Vice President for Advancement Daniel journalism in the United States, It should come as no surprise Pawlus Advertising Sales Manager Chris Keller Development Coordinator Kerry Goleski whatever its more noble aspirations that these two trends should benefit Business Operations Staff Khairah Walker, may be, is also a business, and it exists otherwise marginal candidates and the Glenda Castro, Katy Zhou, Frankarlos Cruz in part to create mass markets for occasional demagogue. Like today’s Advertising Contact [email protected]; 212-515-0102 Subscription contact/Additional advertisers. When there were only three cable news anchor, politicians are not copies 1-800-627-9533 Reprints: reprints@ television networks, it was the sheer talking to most of us, but to their americamedia.org size of the market that mattered most. Mister Widgets, the relatively few of © 2015 America Press Inc. The networks built those markets by us they need in order to win, whatever bringing together different demographic “winning” means in their markets. That groups, people who rarely agreed on is a deeply discouraging trend. But as anything other than the trust they someone used to say, “That’s the way Cover: Truck stop chaplain Deacon Rich Seveska talks with Abdi Rizak at the Foristell Travel Center had for an anchor or program. To it is.” in Foristell,Mo., in 2012. CNS photo/Lisa John- hold together such a diverse audience, MATT MALONE, S.J. ston, St. Louis Review Contents www.americamagazine.org VOL. 213 NO. 8, WHOLE NO. 5101 SEPTEMBER 28, 2015

MINISTRY ISSUE

14 A DEACON’S EDUCATION Lessons on the universal call to Christian ministry Jay Cormier 21 ON THEIR SHOULDERS The pallium in American Catholic history Gerald P. Fogarty 25 A DEEPER MISSION Making short-term service more effective Michael Simmelink 28 THE POETRY OF CATHOLICISM The daily struggle between absurdity and faith John Savant

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 14 4 Current Comment 5 Editorial 6 Reply All 8 Signs of the Times 12 Column Nouveau Censors James T. Keane 18 (Un) Conventional Wisdom TV Comes of Age Robert David Sullivan 31 Vatican Dispatch In China, Fear of Faith Gerard O’Connell 32 Faith in Focus Good Fruit Valerie Schultz Cafeteria Prayers Maurice Timothy Reidy 28 46 The Word Little Children of the Word John W. Martens

BOOKS & CULTURE

37 FILM “A Walk in the Woods” and “Z for Zachariah” OF OTHER THINGS Data-Determinism BOOKS Francis; Katrina;The Fellowship POEM C49

ON THE WEB Full coverage of Pope Francis’ visit to the United States with on-site reporting from America’s editors and contributors. Visit papalvisit.americamedia.org for commentary, photos and a timeline of the papal trip. 37 CURRENT COMMENT

pick up and leave. President Maduro closed the border A Union Opportunity with Colombia in late August when three soldiers were The campaign Fight for $15 has had major successes this wounded in a skirmish that he blamed on the Colombian year in efforts to raise wages for fast-food workers, thanks paramilitary. Soon Colombian immigrants were targeted in to its embrace of unorthodox organizing tactics. That a deportation campaign that has been roundly denounced is partly because older strategies for improving working as scapegoating. Mr. Maduro has been the subject of conditions have not worked in the fast-food industry. That intense criticism as the Venezuelan economy suffers from may be about to change. extreme food shortages. Once again, he is pointing the The modern workplace has become “fissured,” say labor finger of blame at outside forces to bolster his own political historians. Innovative business models, like outsourcing standing. Meanwhile, in a bit of bewildering political supervision, help maximize profits but tend to worsen theater, he has pledged to take in 20,000 Syrian refugees. working conditions and wages. Noting that almost three Bishops from Venezuela and Colombia met in early million U.S. workers are now employed through temporary September to discuss the growing animosity between the agencies, on Aug. 27 the National Labor Relations Board two countries. Pope Francis called the meeting a “sign of revised a definition of the term joint employer that has hope,” but unfortunately the bishops in Venezuela do not hamstrung organizing efforts since the Reagan era. seem to have much influence in Caracas. As the country The ruling means that companies cannot obscure their looks to elections in the fall, world leaders should not obligations to employees through franchise agreements or by be afraid to reprimand Mr. Maduro for his increasingly subcontracting staffing to third parties. Unions struggling to desperate and dangerous antics. organize workers will now be able to bargain with the parent company that is ultimately calling the shots. Kendall Fells, organizing director of the Fight for Drilling Down $15, celebrated the ruling by pointing out the obvious: Many environmental activists accused President Obama of “McDonald’s is the boss.... The company controls hypocrisy during his recent trip to Alaska, which focused everything from the speed of the drive-thru to the way on climate change, because of his administration’s approval workers fold customers’ bags. It’s common sense that of offshore drilling permits in the Alaskan Arctic just McDonald’s should be held accountable for the rights of weeks before. Approving a permit for any new production workers at its franchised stores.” of fossil fuel sources, they charge, amounts to accelerating What comes next is up to the national unions currently global warming. competing to organize fast-food and low-wage retail In an article in Nature last January, Christophe McGlade workers. They should seize this opportunity to coordinate and Paul Ekins suggested that in order to meet the broadly their efforts and avoid disheartening labor turf squabbles. agreed-upon goal of holding global temperature increase For their part consumers should be attentive to those to two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average, “a national chains that cooperate with the N.L.R.B.’s intent third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 percent and direct their dollars accordingly. of current coal reserves should remain unused from 2010 to 2050.” If we must make a commitment to leaving some Another Border Crisis fossil fuels in the ground, then issuing new drilling permits To the sea of images of migrants making their way across does not make any sense. The trouble, however, is that borders we can add one more: families carrying mattresses, constraining the development of new supplies is neither a luggage, even what appeared to be an air conditioner, sufficient nor a fully coherent response to the problem. across a river separating Venezuela from Colombia (New It might help the argument to note that burning all the York Times, Aug. 27). In recent weeks, roughly 1,000 available Arctic reserves would damage the climate more Colombians living in Venezuela were forcibly deported than any of President Obama’s other initiatives would help by the government of President Nicolás Maduro. it. But our attention and energy would be better spent on Many more—an estimated 15,000—fled in fear as the comprehensive responses to climate change, like pricing government began its crackdown. or taxing carbon emissions or developing competitive The image tells the story: Here are families who had renewable energy. And we urgently need a political started new lives in Venezuela. When the government discussion about how to achieve real solutions, not just set targeted their homes for demolition, they decided to environmental tripwires that we dare not cross.

4 America September 28, 2015 EDITORIAL Why Educate?

s summer draws to a close, families deliver their a show. And a student can major in sons and daughters to college. They have checked anything—filmmaking, engineer- Athe ratings, visited the campuses and “fit” the young ing, accounting, nursing, theology person into an environment where they hope he or she can or management—and still, if the thrive. Private college tuition in the United States runs from core curriculum is strong, receive a an average of $25,000 a year to as much as $50,000, plus solid liberal education. room, board and books. To afford this some parents are Governors and presidential forced to work two or more jobs, postpone retirement, skip candidates have proposed several ideas for higher education vacations—even sell their homes. To them the investment reform. Florida’s Gov. Rick Scott, to save money, wants to is worth it, but people measure value in different ways. A charge higher tuition for those who major in liberal arts in college education may “pay off ” in a Wall Street job or, for order to attract more engineering and biotechnology stu- others, two years in the Peace Corps. dents. Wisconsin’s Gov. Scott Walker tried to rewrite the Because of the crippling effects of economic inequal- University of Wisconsin’s mission statement, crossing out ity, education matters more than ever. But recent headlines public service and replacing “search for truth” with “meet the bring bad news. Eighty-nine percent of colleges report a state’s workforce needs.” President Obama once promised rise in clinical depression and 58 percent in anxiety disor- that “folks can make a lot more” learning manufacturing and ders. Binge drinking clouds the mind. Counseling centers trades than with an art history degree. struggle to meet the demand, with long wait times to see Our leaders are responding, in part, to the student a psychiatrist. Meanwhile, well-known universities grapple debt crisis, which leaves many students in need of a well with how to prevent and fairly prosecute sexual assault. paying job in order to get a good start in life. Senator Bernie According to U.S. Catholic (Sept. 2015), eight Catholic Sanders has proposed the College for All Act, by which the schools have introduced sexual assault prevention pro- federal government would cover 67 percent and the states grams. Others have banned fraternities and sororities and 33 percent of the total tuition of public colleges and univer- prohibited alcohol. sities. The money would come from a Robin Hood tax on Students’ responses to these and other moral crises Wall Street’s investment houses and stock trades. Another will depend on the values they have learned from their fami- proposal would cut by half the interest rates on student lies and what they learn in class and the dorms. But beneath loans and enlarge the federal work-study program. these experiences is a more fundamental problem, one that Under either political party, the government must rarely makes the headlines but is at the heart of higher edu- assume its obligation to make education possible. Private cation in the 21st century. schools too, should continue to search for ways to make a In a provocative essay in the September issue of college education more affordable for poor and middle-class Harper’s, “The Neoliberal Arts,” William Deresiewicz, au- students. All students should have the opportunity to take thor of Excellent Sheep, indicts the encroachment of neo- the unique journey that college affords. liberalism, an ideology that reduces all values to money, on For those entering college this fall, make the most of it. campuses. Its purpose, he says, is to “produce producers” Pray, make a retreat or take an in-depth course on a Gospel. rather than “complete human beings.” One need not adopt Choose a mentor, attend a lecture, seek guidance on your his terminology or agree with his examples to see the impor- future. A service project, especially the chance to help the tance of his argument. Indeed, his central thesis is consistent sick and the poor, can educate the heart. After a year abroad, with the mission of Jesuit higher education and many other one will never be the same. Embrace friends; struggle to colleges, religious and secular: the college experience must keep them for life. Read some of the Great Books—Tolstoy, enable students to “build a self or (following Keats) to be- Dostoevsky, Hugo, Dickens, Austen, Melville. The goal is come a soul.” This standard measures a graduate by who she not to “teach a lesson” but to allow the great writers to inti- becomes as a person, not on how much she makes. mately enter the lives of readers literally hundreds of years This is not an elitist idea. It applies to anyone who and thousands of miles away. In this way they live again, and wants to read a book, sing a song, appreciate a painting or we “build a self, become a soul.”

September 28, 2015 America 5 REPLY ALL the church’s mission if they harm the Franciscan apologists claim. ability of working folks to resist unjust “Let us look for healing,” Burns says. No to Vouchers reductions in their wages, benefits and But the Franciscans, the Vatican and In “Our Segregated Schools” (Editorial, political power. the California bishops are not looking 8/31) the editors call for the expan- MARCUS WAGNER for healing, for reconciliation, or offer- sion of voucher programs as a way to Online Comment ing any apologies. The Indians right- combat segregation. What that sug- fully call the mission system “genocide” Nothing to Celebrate gestion misses is that Catholic schools and “slavery.” It doesn’t matter what As a former Franciscan friar, I read are overwhelmingly not unionized. As the friars and soldiers intended. It’s “Serra’s Sainthood,” by Jeffrey M. such, the pay for teachers is significant- what they did that mattered. They Burns (8/31), with interest. He ly lower in Catholic schools than it is left a wake of sickness, death and the should have disclosed that he is the in public schools. This is the reason destruction of a culture in their wake. director of the American Academy why I oppose any and all vouchers. No, you cannot mark this with a can- of Franciscan History, an organiza- They weaken teachers’ unions when onization, only with sincere apologies. tion that funded, in part, the Serra they are already under attack. But there will be none of this at the biography he is touting, by Rosemary The Catholic Church as a universal Basilica of the Immaculate Conception Beebe and Robert Senkewicz. He sets institution is, of course, multicultural. in Washington in September. There up a straw man when he cites fringe But Catholic schools in the United will be pomp, self-congratulations and groups that condemn the Serra can- States, as well as elsewhere, are seg- a clerical sideshow. Native Californians onization. There are many responsible regated because of the prohibitive ex- consider that insulting, and so do I. A Native Californians who oppose the pense of tuition and the segregation of Jesuit magazine should promote the canonization. Serra’s missionary con- our communities. More important, the voices of the oppressed, not the de- quest of California accompanied and pews at Mass are overwhelmingly seg- fenders of the oppressors. supported the military conquest that regated in terms of Latino, white and MARK DAY decimated the Indian population as Online Comment black Catholics as well as by class. But well as their culture. He supervised the the injustice that leads to the segrega- whippings of Indians and even offered tion of schools, parishes and commu- Immigration Now to supply stocks and shackles to mili- nities will not be solved by politically “Surviving in America,” by Tom tary commanders if they needed them. supporting vouchers. It will only be Deignan (8/17), provides much food These were not “spankings,” as some deepened. Vouchers do not advance for thought. What do we do now, though? Armed with our historical perspective and a sense of what has STATUS UPDATE frequently saying, “It’s a shame, but worked and what has not, how do we In “Trigger Warning: On Not Looking we’ve no room!” So I don’t believe the plan and build a better future? In the at Dead Syrian Babies” (In All Things, images change people’s opinions, and Boston of Anthony Lukas’s Common 9/1), Kevin Clarke considers the deci- once such an image has been print- Ground, the poor whites were pitted sion of mainstream media outlets, in- ed, where do we go from there? The against the poor blacks successfully by cluding America, to not publish photo- images become commonplace and the politicians, even though their inter- graphs of migrant and refugee children we start to be hardened to them. We ests were largely congruent. Editorial who drowned in the Mediterranean. should also respect the dignity of the pages of some big city dailies still carry Readers weigh in. dead. We do not need to plaster them across social media; it doesn’t help an all too visible hint of anti-Catholi- cism. When our Catholic high schools I think we’ve got it right in the and can have a negative effect. are populated, for the most part, by United States for this reason: Those SUSAN WARDLE largely white middle- to upper mid- who have compassion do not need Publish the pictures: from Syria, dle-class students, how can we expect to see the pictures, whereas those from Iraq, from Africa and from ev- these young people to develop healthy whose humanity has withered are, ery place of conflict. Paraphrasing the attitudes toward immigrants or others believe it or not, unshaken in their words of Robert E. Lee after one of who are different? And what message views even by the sight of dead chil- the battles of the Civil War: “It is well is being preached from the pulpit to dren. I have been totally shocked by that war is so terrible, lest we should those who identify as Catholic when the comments on Facebook below grow too fond of it.” it comes to incorporating the lessons an image of drowned babies, people GREG WOOD of our Catholic American history into

6 America September 28, 2015 the present day issue of immigration? parishes would need help from well- at an “incredible value—strictly lim- BARRY FITZPATRICK off ones. But, sadly, we want to turn ited,” while trying to bring home the Online Comment feeding, clothing, sheltering and heal- message of “Laudato Si’” to readers, as ing over to civil government, which has covered in previous issues? One of the Closed Ears no interest in treating people as if they pope’s points is that we consumers buy The Aug. 3 column Of Many Things, were treating Jesus. Combine the free so much unnecessary stuff and that by Matt Malone, S.J., sounded so very market with a mindset of commoning each purchase has an environmental clerical, something Pope Francis has in each parish and thus include God in impact that diminishes the quality of spoken against. Yes, we have many the mix, who then has a chance to bless the environment. Do we really need good bishops who are attentive to the and even multiply our efforts. The to have America participate in selling welfare of their flock. However, this question, as always, is: What are we, such stuff? Please, talk the talk and column could not have been written by individually, willing to offer from the walk the walk. the many parents, particularly moth- personal gifts we have received from JAMES OKRASZEWSKI ers, who have approached and continue Land O’ Lakes, Wis. God? When we shirk that responsibil- to contact bishops to report abuse of ity and turn it over to civil government, their children and have been summar- In Christ’s Gaze we lose an opportunity to be Christ- ily dismissed. It could not have been I so enjoy hearing from today’s “new like. With man it is impossible. With written by the many women who have evangelists” in the Generation Faith God, all things are possible. been made to feel guilty when they MIKE VAN VRANKEN column. In particular, thank you and bring concerns to a bishop. It could Online Comment kudos to Robert Minton for “Fortified not have been written by the parents Faith” (7/6). Mr. Minton’s essay who have children who are homosex- Product Placement evoked in me memories of my own ual and who are seeking the church to I find it rather disconcerting to find an struggles as a student at Northwestern be more inclusive and are told to dis- ad for a “Pope on a Pedestal” figurine University so many years ago. The en- appear. It could not have been written next to “Blue Skies Ahead” (7/20), a vironment was quite hedonistic; I was by the poor who see the lavish regalia column by James T. Keane regarding constantly challenged in my striving of the bishops when they are seeking air quality and with the clear connec- for holiness and wholeness. I, too, was to just have food and housing for their tion to Pope Francis’ recent encyclical my own toughest critic. families. I could go on with many oth- on the environment. Is America tru- The author wrote of forgetting his ers who have experienced the closed ly so in need of revenues that it must failures and gazing, “however obliquely, ears of many bishops. Yes, we cannot take ads for stuff like “collectible items” upon the good in others and ourselves” lump all of the hierarchy and using that good “as together, but we do have the well-spring of growth.” to acknowledge that many Bravo! Pope Francis writes bishops have failed to serve of another kind of gazing their flock as Pope Francis in “The Joy of the Gospel.” has set forth in many ad- He says we need to place dresses and documents. ourselves in the presence of MARIAH SNYDER the Lord and let Jesus gaze St. Paul, Minn. upon us: “Standing before him with open hearts, Church Commons letting him look at us, we Re “Pontifex Economicus,” see that gaze of love which by Nathan Schneider Nathaniel glimpsed…” (8/3): As I see it, we must (No. 264). When one sits first and foremost practice in the presence of the Lord “commoning” in our own and allows the Lord to gaze parish boundaries. What if upon him- or herself, one each parish provided food, cannot help but be moved shelter, clothing and health to share that warmth and services for everyone who is love with others. needy within the boundary MATT FURJANIC of that parish? Yes, some Chicago, Ill. BOB ECKSTEIN CARTOON:

September 28, 2015 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

MIDDLE EAST U.S. Bishops Urge Stepped-up Response to Syrian Refugee Crisis he Obama administration announced on Sept. 10 that it would seek to admit 10,000 Syrian refugees during the next fiscal year in response to a Tgrowing crisis that has shocked consciences around the world. That num- ber would reflect a significant increase from the 1,293 admitted in fiscal year 2015, but it falls far short of the number other nations have pledged to accept. “The United States could take considerably more refugees for resettlement if it had the political will to do so,” said Mitzi Schroeder, the director for policy for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA. She explained that resettlement capacity is not an obstacle in the United States. In the past, in fact, much higher numbers of refugees have been absorbed. After the chaotic end of the Vietnam War, the United States resettled 10,000 refugees a month from Vietnam alone, according to Schroeder. But now, she said, the “cumbersome and lengthy security procedures” put in place after 9/11 make rapid response to such crises problematic, requiring the deployment of tremendous resources to get refugees interviewed and approved. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Ky., president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a call for a stronger effort on behalf of Middle East ref- ugees on Sept. 10, just a few days after a dramatic appeal from Pope Francis that every Catholic parish in Europe sponsor a refugee family. “I urge all Catholics in the United States and others of good will to express openness and welcome Officials from Jesuit Refugee the region to keep the door open for to these refugees, who are escaping des- Service/USA welcomed the new com- refugees arriving and to make refugees’ perate situations in order to survive,” he mitment from the United States but lives tolerable while in exile.” That could said. “Regardless of their religious affil- suggested that the new numbers should “alleviate the pressure forcing refugee iation or national origin, these refugees reflect only the beginning of a more families to take risky routes to seek are all human persons—made in the comprehensive effort to respond to the better conditions.” She added, “Creative image of God, bearing inherent dignity deepening crisis. J.R.S. officials point thinking is also needed on ways to and deserving our respect and care and out that even as nations agree to higher make refugees safe and self-sufficient protection by law from persecution.” refugee thresholds, the current bureau- in the short term, for example, through Archbishop Kurtz encouraged a cratic process for registering, vetting a legal status including right to work, stronger response from the U.S. gov- and accepting refugees remains onerous until some long term solution can be ernment to “assist more robustly the and in its current composition will nev- reached.” KEVIN CLARKE nations of Europe and the Middle East er meet the pressing needs of the crisis. in protecting and supporting these ref- Most resettlement officials agree that it ugees and in helping to end this hor- would be best to increase the process- SACRAMENTS rific conflict.” He added, “The Catholic ing of resettlement applicants before Church in the United States—with they begin a hazardous flight across the Papal Decrees nearly 100 Catholic Charities agen- Middle East and the Mediterranean to cies and hundreds of parishes assisting gain access to Europe. Seek Faster refugees to this country each year, and But resettlement, “while tremen- Annulments with Catholic Relief Services provid- dously important for some individuals,” ing humanitarian aid to refugees in is not the full answer for a crisis of this ope Francis’ reformed rules for the Middle East and Europe—stands size, said Schroeder. “More resources marriage annulment cases, mak- ready to help in this effort.” are needed to improve the situation in Ping the process simpler, quicker

8 America September 28, 2015 churches—Pope Francis removed the suggested that the pope’s decision to re- requirement that all decrees of nullity spond to calls to reform the annulment must be confirmed by a second panel process now has moved the subject of judges; he urged dioceses around the off the table for the upcoming synod world to make the process free or as on family life in October. That should close to free as possible; and he estab- allow synod participants to focus on lished a “brief process” by which dioc- other problematic challenges related esan bishops can recognize the nullity to divorced and remarried Catholics. of a union when both parties agree and Although the new rules respond to have overwhelming proof that their most bishops’ sense that the annulment union did not meet at least one of the process was too cumbersome, they do Catholic Church’s requirements for a not resolve the cases of Catholics who sacramental marriage. want to return to the sacraments after “Hopefully tribunal personnel will they are divorced and civilly remarried be reinvigorated in the upcoming Year without having received an annulment. of Mercy to work with applicants with When Cardinal Walter Kasper of compassion and to utilize the new pro- Germany, a well-known theologian, cedures as a form of ministry to those former diocesan bishop and Vatican who come to them from a difficult official, suggested to the College of SAFE AT LAST? Syrian refugee children covered with domestic situation,” Father McKenna Cardinals in February 2014 the pos- dust arrive on Sept. 10 at the said. sibility of a “penitential process” that Jordanian border with Syria and Catholic marriage tribunals do not could lead some divorced and civilly Iraq, near Amman, Jordan. dissolve marriages, but assess whether remarried Catholics back to the sac- or not a valid sacramental marriage was raments without an annulment, he in- and less expensive, respond to calls that present from the begin- sisted it would respond to bishops from around the world have ning. Catholics whose the needs only of a small been making since before the 1980 first unions are declared portion of divorced and meeting of the Synod of Bishops on null—meaning there remarried Catholics. Most the family convoked by St. John Paul II. never was a sacramental should seek an annulment, With the new rules released on Sept. marriage—are free to he said. 8, Pope Francis has made important marry in the church and For those who have lit- changes to the annulment process, but receive the sacraments, tle or no chance of proving he did not make it easier for couples to including reconciliation their initial union was not prove a union was not a marriage. and Communion. a sacramental marriage “I think these decrees are another in- The need to reform and cannot leave their cur- dication of Pope Francis’ pastoral con- the annulment process INDISSOLUBLE. The rent partner, the peniten- cern and fleshing out that concern with and cut its costs was sacrament of marriage tial path would—in a re- depicted in St. Isabel a practical and viable strategy,” the Rev. supported by an over- Church in Sanibel, Fla. flection of God’s mercy— Kevin McKenna, a canon lawyer who whelming majority of tolerate their second union is pastor of the Sacred Heart Cathedral bishops—about 90 and allow them to receive Community in Rochester, N.Y.. told percent—at last year’s meeting of the Communion, Cardinal Kasper said. America. “He has not changed the Synod of Bishops. The U.S. bishops It would not entail denying that their dogmatic and theological principles report that most tribunals charge be- sacramental marriage was indissoluble, which underlie the annulment process. tween $200 and $1,000, and the pro- and it would not permit them to marry He has instead worked to make it less cess can take 12 to 18 months. Some go again in the church. cumbersome and less expensive.” on for years. That “penitential path” option is ex- In two apostolic letters—one for the James Conn, S.J., professor of the pected to be debated at the world syn- Latin church and one for eastern-rite practice of canon law at Boston College, od of bishops in October.

September 28, 2015 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES Mission History Review California Catholic leaders plan to NEWS BRIEFS revamp church curriculum and mu- As Israeli students began their seum programs on the California second week of classes on Sept. 6, mission system to present more ac- thousands of students and teachers curately the history, the perspective from Christian schools converged of California Indians and the mis- in front of the Prime Minister sions’ impact on Indian life. The ini- Bibi Netanyahu’s office to protest tiative is part of a larger program of government budget cuts to their the California bishops and Franciscan schools. • During his homily on leaders preparing for the canonization Sept. 10, Pope Francis said, “If you Israel school protest of Blessed Junípero Serra, a Spanish do not know how to forgive, you Franciscan missionary who founded are not a Christian,” before imploring priests who cannot be mer- the California mission system. Pope ciful to ask for a desk job and “never walk into a confessional, I beg Francis is scheduled to canonize him in you.” • Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C., called for Washington on Sept. 23. Many Native solidarity with the persecuted Christians of the Middle East during Americans and organizations have a Sept. 9 prayer service during the In Defense of Christians sum- criticized the upcoming canonization, mit in Washington. •The Vatican’s doctrinal congregationupheld a saying that Blessed Serra was part of a Spanish bishop’s refusal on Sept. 1 to allow a transsexual person system that destroyed Indian life. “The to be a godparent. • On Sept. 10, New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo Indian experience has been ignored pledged his support for a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour, or denied, replaced by an incomplete a hike that would help three million N.Y. wage earners. • Cardinal version of history focused more on Charles Bo of Yangon urged Myanmar’s president on Sept. 10 to European colonists than on the orig- review laws that could target religious minorities, arguing the legis- inal Californians,” said the president lation fragments “the dream of a united Myanmar.” of the California Catholic Conference, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, in a statement on Sept. 4 about the curric- ulum and cultural review. than burnish, your commitment to ef- of Parliament voted in favor of the bill; fective and flourishing ‘all hands’ part- 330 voted against it. The bill had faced Faith Hiring Protection nerships,” reads the letter, released by strong opposition from various reli- Religious leaders from different faith the Institutional Religious Freedom gious leaders in the United Kingdom. traditions urged President Obama in Alliance. “Religious staffing by religious A letter written by Justin Welby, arch- a letter on Sept. 10 to continue to per- organizations is protected in Title VII bishop of Canterbury, and signed by mit government-funded faith groups to of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is not leading representatives of the Roman employ people with like beliefs. Their illegal discrimination,” signatories said. Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and request comes less than a month after “This right is not somehow waived or Sikh faiths said the proposed bill a coalition of religious and secular or- otherwise lost simply by the receipt of crossed “a legal and ethical Rubicon” ganizations sent the president a letter government funds.” and would turn suicide into a social saying the current policy will tarnish norm. Meanwhile, across the pond his legacy of fair and equal treatment Right-to-Die Bill in the United States, a measure that for all Americans. The latest signatories would allow physicians to prescribe said the administration’s policy allows Rejected in U.K. life-ending drugs to the terminally ill equal opportunities for religious groups British parliamentarians on Sept. passed the California statehouse and to work with government in helping 11 soundly rejected a right-to-die was on its way to Gov. Jerry Brown’s the needy. “Making it more difficult for bill that would have allowed people desk on Sept. 11. faith-based organizations to join those with less than six months to live to end partnerships would undermine, rather their lives legally. Only 118 members From CNS, RNS and other sources.

10 America September 28, 2015 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

DISPATCH | JOHANNESBURG trend of self-styled, often individual “ministries” built around charismatic Church Police in South Africa? individuals. They lack any real structure or theology apart from an eccentric, n the last few months a pastor and wedge between the secular state and the literal reading of the Bible and peo- self-styled prophet, Penuel Mnguni religious communities. South African ple’s willingness to believe in what is Iof the End Times Disciples society is marked by a strange combi- preached. These churhces easily pop up Ministries, has been commanding nation of deep faith and growing secu- and just as quickly disappear. members of his congregationin in larism. The percentage of nonreligious Regulation is also undesirable. No Soshanguve township near Pretoria to people, particularly among economic, one wants to see state control of reli- eat live snakes. Charged with cruelty social and political elites, has grown dra- gion. It is also unnecessary, since the to animals and released pending trial, matically since 1994. Simultaneously South African Constitution, while the pastor has recently encouraged his faith practices have become more fun- strongly defending freedom of religion, followers to eat underwear. Others of damentalist. Pentecostal-Evangelical sets limitations on church practices his ilk have made believers eat grass or and African Initiated Christianity has already based on deference to human drink petrol. rights. While conscience allows re- Church leaders from across Leaders from across ligions to practice what they believe the theological spectrum have de- (for example, not to witness same- nounced these practices as danger- the theological spectrum sex marriages), some practices that ous and immoral. They complain violate the law (corporal punishment they bring religion itself into disre- have denounced these in faith-based schools) are outlawed. pute. Secular observers have called practices. Mnguni has rightly been prosecuted Mnguni’s acts gross violations of not for his belief but for cruelty to human rights. A few have even pro- animals. posed that some form of regulation be become the dominant spiritual dis- So what is to be done to curb what introduced to control religious excesses, course. Biblical literalism, belief in I consider at the very least spiritual with some Christian voices calling for a witchcraft and the supernatural and the abuse? It seems essential that the wid- self-regulatory body. embrace of “miracles and wonders” is er South African public receive better That such ministries are sinister is common currency. religious education, both from within obvious. They rely on mass, possibly Secularists are contemptuous of faith communities and from state ed- hypnotic, suggestion, group hysteria such credulity, citing it as further ucation—the latter having abolished and unscrupulous manipulation. In proof of the irrationality of all religion. most religion education and cut back many cases the promise of “miracles” The formerly mainstream European- on theology faculties in state universi- and personal empowerment is directly founded churches rightly worry that ties since the 1990s. Above all, state and connected to deeper preoccupations: the credibility of faith itself is at stake. faith communities need to understand personal healing and prosperity. Dysfunctional religion and spiritual why so many people are being drawn These promises come at a price, of abuse make the headlines; the churches’ into prosperity and healing religion. As course. Apart from leaving one’s reason long-established charity and service to I see it, poverty and desperation, poor at the church door (or tent flap, as in the poor do not. Faced with declining education and massively inadequate the case of our little friend Mnguni), membership, they are also faced with public health-care are issues that need the price includes massive “tithes” to the a deeper dilemma: whether—or how to be addressed. pastors as a sign of faith in their power. far—to embrace the beliefs and practic- I suspect, too, that this is not a Needless to say, there is no evidence to es of the new churches. uniquely South African problem. If we show that people get better or richer— Suggestions about greater regulation look at fundamentalism globally, some apart from the pastors. of churches are neither workable nor with practices even more dangerous These cults are driving a deeper desirable. They are unworkable because than eating snakes, we see the same ANTHONY EGAN, S.J., a correspondent for the kinds of churches that practice causes, the same challenges to reason- America, is a member of the Jesuit Institute South these dangerous absurdities are part of able people of all or no faiths. Africa. a long-established, but mushrooming ANTHONY EGAN

September 28, 2015 America 11 JAMES T. KEANE Nouveau Censors ho wasn’t outraged at the traditionalists but from those who fan- dent who can’t. This is the new morality, recent news that the re- cy themselves the most progressive. and with it the new pornography. Wquired reading for Duke The fight against obscenity can seem But what can escape the outrage University’s incoming students this a relic of another age, the quaint time of censors when everything is an out- August was Alison Bechdel’s graphic the Legion of Decency, so when it comes rage? Old episodes of “Family Feud”? novel Fun Home, and that some stu- to sexy books these days, we sometimes (Not the ones with that oleaginous dents had opted out? The students had loudly assure each other we are not Richard Dawson, that’s for sure). Want taken offense on religious grounds at prudes. Raise your hand if you’ve en- to read your children The Chronicles of what they called graphic depictions of dured a priest tendentiously explaining Narnia? C. S. Lewis employed vicious same-sex liaisons and promotion of a just how wonderfully naughty the Song caricatures of Arabs to depict the des- lesbian lifestyle. Those outraged that of Songs is meant to be. But this doesn’t ert-dwelling Calormenes, complete students were forced to read such ma- mean we’ve surrendered our notions of with scimitars, hooked noses and tur- terial were soon outnumbered by those outrage. On the contrary; it bans—all worshiping outraged that students were allowed to might be our signature emo- But what a god clearly identi- decide which assignments they needed tion. We have just found fiable as Satan. How to complete. For almost everyone, it was new and different offenses can escape about John Kennedy one more sign civilization is collapsing. to be outraged by, and most the outrage Toole’s brilliant novel, A The obvious winner here was Alison of them can be found in the Confederacy of Dunces, Bechdel, who immediately gained an books we teach. censors something of a hipster enormous new audience (including But literature, like life, is bible? A cruel and cli- myself ) looking to see what the fuss a messy thing. Your favorite when every- chéd mockery of homo- was all about. While her book is raw at author might also be a terri- thing is an sexuals is central to the many points, I found it hard to see how ble sexist or racist or homo- plot. Huckleberry Finn? anyone could argue it is pornographic phobe, or an enthusiast for outrage? So, so racist. The same or obscene. While obscenity can be a some other loathsome hob- criteria will soon sink difficult thing to pin down (Remember by. His or her characters might be even Flannery O’Connor, Richard Ford, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s worse. It can make for hard reading and Joseph Heller and William Faulkner as litmus test: “I know it when I see it”), often requires a stout heart. Remember well—not in the name of decency, but surely those college students have seen when you first realized what was go- in the name of safety. 10 million images more obscene on the ing on in Nabokov’s Lolita? That nov- Our irony, in the world of Catholic side of a bus than the few raw or sug- el abounds in graphic and repulsive literature and academia, is that no gestive drawings in the book. scenes, and not in some jejune com- group should fear the good intentions The students who opted out are an ic-book fashion either. But did reading of the censors more than Catholic in- easy foil, of course, because one can and Lolita land you in the hospital? tellectuals themselves. It wasn’t long should argue that the whole point of An unfortunate commonplace in ago that Rome was actually blacklisting college is to be exposed to unsettling our educational institutions these days Graham Greene and other novelists in things. But one of academia’s dirty is the notion that students must be pro- the Index of Forbidden Books, to say little secrets isn’t being mentioned by tected from certain literature because nothing of the academic theologians either side: In reality, the threat of lit- it could damage them or trigger hid- silenced by the Congregation for the erary censorship in academia these den traumas. Nabokov wouldn’t stand Doctrine of the Faith. Why? Because days (Catholic and otherwise) does not a chance against the blizzard of trigger good Catholics needed to be protected usually come from religious or cultural warnings and complaints about micro- from harmful literature. aggressions that would accompany his Laughable, isn’t it? That we once JAMES T. KEANE is an editor at Orbis Books in novel today. It has become not a ques- thought so little of people that we as- Ossining, N.Y., and a former associate editor of tion of whether most can handle Lolita, sumed they’d be permanently damaged America. Twitter: @jamestkeane. but whether there might be some stu- if they read the wrong thing.

12 America September 28, 2015 September 28, 2015 America 13 A Deacon’s Education Lessons on the universal call to Christian ministry BY JAY CORMIER n Memorial Day weekend last year, 22 of us sacrament of baptism. stood before our bishop and were ordained If and when I get too taken with my ordained role in the to the diaconate. We had spent four years— church, it will help me to remember that the Greek word for five if you include the year of discernment deacon is also the word for waiter. and application—preparing for this day. In Othat time we had studied Scripture, liturgy, moral theology The Right Fit and canon law. I would soon discover I still had a lot to learn. At Mass and liturgical functions, I wear a big, monastic-style Now, having completed my first year of ordained minis- alb that was given to me at candidacy. The first time I wore try, I can see that the most important things I have learned it, I could barely move. I felt I was swimming in this sea of apply to all of us who struggle to be disciples of Jesus and cloth. I still sometimes feel lost in it. sons and daughters of God. These lessons are less about ful- And that is a good thing, I have learned. I should disap- filling the duties of a deacon and more about simply being pear in it. Anyone who ministers in the church should “dis- a Christian. appear” in his or her work. We take our cue from John the Baptist in the fourth Gospel: “Christ must increase, I must It Is Not About You decrease...” (Jn 3:30). As my wife, Ann, and I went through the formation process When I celebrate a baptism or a wedding, it is God work- for deacons, we shared our questions and doubts: “Is this the ing in this moment, not me. God speaks when I preach faith- right thing for us? What if I get assigned to a pastor who fully; God is present when I lead a community in prayer. We does not really want a deacon? What if I am asked to take ordained people might possess an authority or competence on something I cannot do—or have no interest in? We do not see enough of each other as it is. What if I...? What if we...?” Finally, a priest whose wisdom and friend- ship I have cherished since my undergraduate When I celebrate a baptism or a days said to me: “Jay, if you’re doing this because wedding, it is God working in this you think you might be able to do some good, if you think you might be able use your gifts moment, not me. God speaks when for the whole church, then do it. But if you’re doing it for yourself, for what you’ll get out of I preach faithfully; God is present it, stop now. You will only be disappointed in the end. And, frankly, we don’t need another when I lead a community in prayer. self-absorbed cleric in the church.” I think this is the attitude we should all bring to the church: It is about us, not me. Jesus calls us to community, which requires humility, generosity and a spirit of gratitude. To possess the heart and that comes from learning and experience, but the truth is mind of Jesus begins with embracing his model of service. that as a deacon I have no power. And neither does anyone In a very real sense we are all deacons, called to serve and else who is ordained. God has the power. I do not baptize; love one another. That is Jesus’ vision of church: He calls us I pour the water and voice the prayers. God is acting in our to ministry not in the sacrament of holy orders but in the words and gestures. Every day in the parish I become more aware of the ev- eryday “small-s” sacraments we all take part in. The grace JAY CORMIER, a deacon at Saints Mary and Joseph Parish in Salem, N.H., teaches communications and humanities at St. Anselm College and of God is present in the generosity and kindness we offer, Merrimack College and edits the homiletics resource Connections. in the forgiveness we extend, in the justice we sacrifice for.

14 America September 28, 2015 BLESSING BEASTS. Deacon Eric Bertrand and Deacon Tom Hunkele bless hogs in Iowa on April 10.

Aprons, work gloves and sneakers can be the vesture of min- embrace God’s grace in a different existence, in a safe bub- isters; cooking pots, storybooks and rakes are all sacred ves- ble detached from the evil of the world. But, again, as John sels when they become instruments of the love of God in the Baptist proclaims: the Lamb of God walks among us. our midst. Such is the power of God who works in all our The challenge of all Christians is to reveal the love of God ministries. My big alb reminds me to make room for him. in the midst of our messy, clumsy, hectic lives. As St. Teresa of Avila counseled her sisters: “God walks among the pots God Belongs in the Kitchen and pans.” Many good and dedicated people, ordained and not, give a That is certainly the challenge the millennial generation great deal of time to make a parish work. But sometimes in the United States is posing to us. Every demographic and when we are running off to church, we trip over God on the sociological profile of millennials—the 80 million strong way out the door of our own homes. born between 1980 and 2000—shows a generation that is We forget that God is present at our tables every night. pragmatic and realistic, neither dreamers nor romantics. Are God is present when we are reading to our children at bed- they self-centered? Some. But what drives them? Purpose. time or helping them with their homework. The spirit of They want their lives to mean something. They do not care God hovers over our teenager and us when we are having about establishments and institutions; they are more inter- one of those “talks.” The love of God surrounds you and your ested in relationships. They are not impressed by power. spouse when you are together. They seek joy and authenticity. I am discovering more and more that people are looking We in church ministry should take note of what the Time for God in their lives where they are. We church folk of- magazine reporter Joel Stein told us in his cover story on mil- ten sound as if we want people to abandon their lives and lennials in May 20, 2013: “They’re not into going to church, MESCHER COLLINS, DIOCESE OF DES MOINES CNS PHOTO/KELLY

September 28, 2015 America 15 even though they believe in God, because they don’t identify with big institutions; one-third of adults under 30, the highest percentage ever, are religiously unaffili- ated. They want new experiences, which are more important to them then material goods.” That is our present and future chal- lenge: to make the church a place where they can do good and meaningful things, where they can love others, where they can experience God in relationship and community. I have come to understand that the most important thing pastors and ministers, teachers and parents can do is to reveal the love of God in the midst of the good we do and are: God in our fami- lies, God in our work, God in our school, God among our friends, God in our com- munity. Even as I have taken on the role of an ordained minister in our church, I have learned to look beyond the church walls for the presence of God—in my life with Ann and my family, in my teaching, in my writing, in my parish. As a student of mine said to me, “Show me where God is in my life. Help me see the possibilities for good and meaning in the real life I’m living.” And that is what makes every one of us disciples: being aware of God’s love in the ordinary mess- iness of our everyday lives. God is present not only on the parish table in bread and wine but at our own dinner tables, when we share simple meals with family and friends. This is what I have learned over the past six years, studying and praying about the diaconate and making my way through my first year of ministry, with the help of a generous and patient pastor, parish staff and community. It has been a wonderful experience, but a profoundly humbling one, and I am grateful for that gift of humility. So please continue to pray for the or- dained in your parish and community: that we may always be good and selfless waiters, that we may not walk around or trip over God on our way and that we never, ever get too comfortable in our albs and stoles. A

16 America September 28, 2015

(UN) CONVENTIONAL WISDOM TV Comes of Age

n 1961, when the chair of the kids, it is no surprise that a comedy N.Y. Even a more comedic series, like the Federal Communications was the popular pick of the evening. “Orange Is the New Black,” can provoke I Commission, Newton Minow, Nothing like “The Beverly Hillbillies” debate about our prison system. declared television a “vast wasteland,” could be produced today. Maybe the Other series tackle the big question he could not have foreseen that the idea of a dirt-poor family in the Ozarks of what makes a fulfilling life, with medium would be transformed into becoming millionaires would result in “Mad Men” questioning consumer- something more like a huge rainforest, a truly inventive animated series, or a ism and the blind drive for status. In so fertile that it’s impossible to count drama in which Jed Clampett questions the 1980s, that AMC series would not all its species. Minnow was speaking what his new riches say about his pur- have attracted enough teenage view- when almost all programming was pose in life, or a reality series that ex- ers to last more than a few episodes, produced by three commercial net- plored sex and drugs in Beverly Hills. but now a show that merits repeated works. ABC, CBS and NBC claimed But a show that attempt- viewings by a small to give people what they asked for— ed to entertain everyone Shows audience can be prof- copycat Westerns, ridiculous sitcoms in the family and stayed itable. There have been and the occasional bit of mindless vio- away from politics, religion that stayed even smaller audienc- lence, later in the evening, for the dads and anything controversial away from es for such programs of America. But that was a form of would be pointless in 2015. as “Enlightened,” circular logic, for Americans were still Today’s audience has anything about the paradox of fascinated enough by television itself been splintered by hun- controversial a self-absorbed social that they were willing to watch what- dreds of cable networks activist, and “Rectify,” ever they were given. and websites like Netflix. would be which centers on a man An episode of the sitcom “The It’s a cliché to compare the pointless in released from death Beverly Hillbillies,” in which Granny style of contemporary TV row and poses tough mistakes a kangaroo for a “giant jack- dramas to novels, but the 2015. questions about faith rabbit,” set a viewership record on Jan. 8, comparison also applies and forgiveness. 1964, and legend has it that Americans to how people view television series Journalism has not necessarily ben- wanted a bit of escapism after the assas- today—when they want and at their efited from this splintering of the TV sination of President John F. Kennedy. own pace. Thoughtful programs can audience. News divisions operate by But in much of the country the only slowly find an audience through word- the old rules of getting large numbers alternatives that evening were the pon- of-mouth or through their inclusion on of viewers now, not in a few years on derous medical drama “Ben Casey” and college syllabuses, as has been the case Netflix. Often the result is sensation- an NBC special on Pope Paul VI’s vis- with HBO’s drama “The Wire.” alism and appeals to partisan preju- it to Bethlehem and Jerusalem. (The “The Wire”—which began as a look dice. The trend toward niche program- latter was the kind of program the at the war on drugs in Baltimore and ming may also limit subject matter networks would sprinkle across their zoomed out to cover city politics, public on dramatic series. “Friday Night schedules when they feared the govern- education and journalism—is the most Lights” was lauded by critics, but few ment might take away their licenses for prominent example of a TV series in- blue-state viewers were interested in not serving the “public interest.”) At a forming public debate in the same way a show about high-school football in time when families watched television a novel like “The Grapes of Wrath” or Texas. “The Wire” gave little attention together, and parents somewhat guiltily a nonfiction exposé like “Silent Spring” to churches in Baltimore’s black com- used the “idiot box” as a way to pacify once did. We’ve also seen nuanced de- munity, perhaps because it would be a pictions of American politics on this turn-off to upscale HBO viewers. The year’s miniseries “Show Me a Hero,” vast wasteland is gone, but there is still ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN is a freelance writ- er and editor living in the Boston area. Twitter: which dramatized the fight to de- room for growth. @RobertDSullivan. segregate public housing in Yonkers, ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN

18 America September 28, 2015 September 28, 2015 America 19 20 America September 28, 2015 On Their Shoulders The pallium in American Catholic history BY GERALD P. FOGARTY

he news that Pope Francis has changed the procedure for the reception and im- position of the pallium probably struck most Catholics as a relatively insignif- Ticant alteration in a ceremony restricted to very high members of the hierarchy, archbishops with metropolitan provinces—and therefore virtually unknown to most of the faithful. The change in the ceremony means that although each year the new- ly named metropolitans will go to Rome to receive the pallium from the pope on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, as they have done in the past, the pallium will actually be imposed on them only later, in the cathedral of their home diocese. The pallium, made of wool and worn around the neck, was originally used only by popes, symboliz- ing that the pope was a good shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders. By about the sixth century, the pallium was granted also to metropolitan arch- bishops to indicate their ties to the see of Rome and their jurisdiction over a metropolitan province, which consists in a major diocese or metropol- itan see and several suffragan dioceses. (It should be noted that prelates may have the rank of arch- bishop without being metropolitans, like nuncios to governments or apostolic delegates to national hierarchies or secretaries to Roman curial congre- gations.) As the practice of conferring the pallium on a metropolitan developed, it came to symbolize his full metropolitan authority. Citing earlier legis- SPECIAL DELIVERY. Boxes containing palliums ready in St. lation, the Code of Canon Law of 1917 specified Peter’s Basilica for delivery to new metropolitan archbishops on that a new archbishop had three months after be- June 29. ing consecrated or taking possession of his see to seek the pallium from the pope either personally or through a representative. Only after the pallium was im- the suffragan sees of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and posed could he exercise his authority in the province. This Bardstown. But the official bulls and pallium had been canon was repeated in the revised code of 1983. entrusted to Bishop Richard Luke Concannen, O.P., who In the United States, getting the pallium was some- was consecrated in Rome as the first bishop of New York. times difficult. In 1808 Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore Unfortunately, he was unable to obtain passage on a ship to was named the first archbishop in the United States, with the United States because of the Napoleonic wars and died in Naples. Only on Aug. 18, 1811, did Archbishop Carroll GERALD P. FOGARTY, S.J., is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of receive the pallium, delivered by the British minister to the

CNS PHOTO/L’OSSERVATOIRE ROMANO, HANDOUT CNS PHOTO/L’OSSERVATOIRE Religious Studies and History at the University of Virginia. United States and imposed on him by Bishop Leonard

September 28, 2015 America 21 Neale, the coadjutor bishop who would succeed him as arch- in church history, named the first American cardinal, John bishop. McCloskey, archbishop of New York, and established the Immigration was the single greatest cause for the increase four new provinces with a metropolitan and suffragan sees: of the Catholic population and, therefore, for the increase of Boston, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Santa Fe. The Holy archdioceses. In 1846 St. Louis was elevated to metropoli- See appointed Msgr. Cesare Roncetti to bring the red biret- tan status, as was Oregon City, which was in the Oregon ter- ta to Archbishop McCloskey and the palliums for the new ritory, then disputed between the United States and Britain. metropolitans. Boston was separated from the Province of Three years later, the bishops of the province of Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia from the Province of Baltimore, which included all the United States except for St. Louis, and Milwaukee and Santa Fe from the Province of St. Louis. which did not yet have suffragan sees, met for the Seventh The growing metropolis of Chicago was temporarily by- Provincial Council. Independent of the conciliar legislation, passed because the bishop, James Duggan, had gone insane the bishops, who included Archbishop Peter R. Kenrick of and was in a mental hospital in Hanover, Mo.; so for the St. Louis, met to petition the Holy See to elevate to metro- time Chicago remained part of the Province of St. Louis. politan sees the dioceses of New York, Cincinnati and New Duggan had a coadjutor, Thomas Foley, who died in 1880, Orleans. When Pius IX received the petition, he must have at which time Chicago also become an archdiocese. Santa Fe seen a glimmer of hope in the expansion of the church across was elevated to the status of archdiocese, but its suffragan the Atlantic, for in Europe the church seemed shrouded in sees were not canonically dioceses but vicariates apostolic, darkness. At the time, he had been exiled from Rome by the missionary territories under the jurisdiction of bishops with forces of the Risorgimento, which would finally end papal delegated authority from the Congregation of Propaganda temporal power, and was living in Gaeta, near Naples. From Fide, the missionary arm of the Holy See, in Rome. there, he sent the necessary bulls and palliums to establish In April 1875 Monsignor Roncetti presented the red the new archdioceses. biretta to Archbishop McCloskey in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. The new cardinal-elect still had to A Growing Church go to Rome to receive the official red hat from the pope at But the American church continued to expand. In 1875 Pius a consistory. Monsignor Roncetti then undertook a tour of IX, nearing the end of what remains the longest pontificate the United States to attend the celebrations of the imposi-

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22 America September 28, 2015 tion of the pallium in Boston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee. tify him less than a week before the ceremony that he had a He described the ceremonies and the Gregorian chant in sore throat. Cardinal Spellman then had to phone Cardinal Boston and Philadelphia as equal to anything in Europe. Dennis Dougherty in Philadelphia, who had earlier declined He then took a train to Pittsburgh and then to Chicago, an invitation to attend, to take the train to New York to pre- where he boarded a steamboat to go up Lake Michigan to side over the ceremony in which the symbol of metropolitan Milwaukee. There he reflected on the ethnic pluralism of the authority would be conferred on him. American church, as he described the reading of the bulls in The wool for the pallium is taken, at least in part, from Latin, English and German. two lambs blessed by the pope on the feast of St. Agnes, Jan. He then told his Roman superiors that he abandoned his 21. During the summer, the lambs are shorn, and religious original intention to proceed to Santa Fe to confer the palli- sisters then use the wool to weave the palliums, which are um on Archbishop John Baptist Lamy. He had learned from then stored in an urn close to the spot thought to be the tomb Cardinal McCloskey and others that the distance from New of St. Peter. In times past, the presentation of the pallium was York to Santa Fe was almost equal to that of an ocean-cross- frequently informal, especially when a delegate of the arch- ing to Italy, with about 400 miles of the journey by stage bishop was dispatched to fetch the garment. Sometimes, even coach or on horseback, with “the danger of encountering the if the new archbishop actually visited the pope, an assistant Indians, who entertain themselves by taking from the for- would simply take him to the urn containing the palliums eigners they encounter the hair on top of the cranium.” The and hand him one of them to take back to his archdiocese. monsignor commented that “although because of my bald- The change made by Pope Francis in the way the pallium ness I would not have to fear becoming the victim of this act, is presented and imposed is a minor one, but it does rein- nevertheless I think it well not to venture on this journey,” troduce the time-honored involvement of the local church so he entrusted the brief and the pallium to Bishop John without surrendering the special relationship to the Holy Baptist Salpointe, the vicar apostolic of Arizona, who was See represented by the pallium. The former imposition by passing through New York on his way to his post. the pope of the pallium on newly named metropolitans pre- sented the danger of deepening the erroneous belief of too The Imposition of the Pallium many Catholics that archbishops and bishops are delegates Monsignor Roncetti’s account of the conferral of four palli- of the pope. A ums in four widely separated new metropolitan sees is one of the most colorful, but it also indicates the importance that the conferral had for the local church over which the new archbishop would exercise his authority. Not every such cer- emony, however, was a sign of harmony. On April 12, 1939, Francis Spellman, then auxiliary bishop of Boston, received a telegram informing him that he was named the archbish- op of New York. He had been ordained a priest for Boston but had several conflicts with the diocesan bishop, Cardinal William Henry O’Connell. He managed to get a position at the Vatican, where he was the first American to work per- manently in the Secretariat of State. In 1929 he befriended the newly appointed secretary of state, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli. In 1932 he was named auxiliary bishop to Cardinal O’Connell, who had not asked for an auxiliary, much less for Bishop Spellman. Cardinal O’Connell had risen to his position through his friendship with Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, the secretary of state under Pius X. Now, his auxiliary of seven years had a yet more powerful patron in Rome, for Cardinal Pacelli was the new pope. Bishop Spellman was installed as archbishop at a Mass in New York on May 23, 1939, but he had to wait until the following March for the imposition of the pallium. In an effort to overcome past enmity and display some sense of unity, he had succeeded in having Cardinal O’Connell agree to impose the pallium, only to have the cardinal no-

September 28, 2015 America 23 24 America September 28, 2015 A Deeper Mission Making short-term service more effective BY MICHAEL SIMMELINK PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/ WENDY KAVENEY PHOTOGRAPHY PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/ WENDY KAVENEY

ere is some good news about young adults in say, “Thanks,” you say “You’re welcome,” and you walk away the church: They interpret the words of Jesus feeling good about what you just did. to “go and make disciples” to mean they should But these passing exchanges are not at the heart of mis- spend their time and resources helping those sion work. The work Jesus was urging people toward when Hwho are less fortunate. he said “go” is rooted in a long-term commitment to preach- And here is some not-so-good news: For many, the ing the Gospel while serving other children of God. It is not deeper meaning of such actions remains uncertain. As often quick, and it is rarely easy. Paul Borthwick says in his book Western Christians in The trouble begins when short-term projects prioritize Global Missions, “although globally aware, these young peo- the positive vibes of good deeds over true ministry. And ple seem unclear on what the Gospel is beyond just ‘doing believe me, these projects are popular. In 2005 Princeton good.’” released a survey that found 1.6 million Americans partic- Mission work has become synonymous with good deeds, ipated in mission trips that were less than two weeks long, and that conflation is at the heart of the current crisis in at a cost of $2.4 billion. The trend suggested those numbers missiology. A good deed can be defined as a singular, often will grow annually. spur-of-the-moment act that is not meant to establish any Americans see the world is hurting and want to help, but sort of long-term partnership. Holding the elevator for a too often these efforts come in short bursts and seek im- man who has his hands full, for example, or lending change mediate results. Parishes or schools see people in poverty in to the woman who is a little short at the cash register. They Harlem, Guatemala, Libya, Houston, Russia or China, so they gather a small group from their church to go to those MICHAEL SIMMELINK is a recent graduate of Northwestern College, places and try to help. where he earned degrees in journalism and biblical studies. But problems arise when the needs of the community be-

September 28, 2015 America 25 ing served are not considered. Too often, the people to whom Too often, we look only at what the needs of a person are these works or donations are directed do not need what is and do not bother to ask them what they can offer. Carrying given. Roger Sandberg, who was the country director in out God’s mission is not about bringing our plans to the Haiti for Medair, an international humanitarian aid agency, corners of the world; it requires acknowledging the gifts says aid should be divided into three stages: relief, rehabilita- of a person and partnering with them so their gifts may be tion and development. Relief is given only for a few months, tapped for God’s glory. Once they are empowered, we hope and usually only after a crisis when basic needs have to be that the assets of a person can provide self-sustaining means. met. Rehabilitation is the process of turning over aid-provi- sion into the hands of the community. Development is what Practical Commitments most long-term missions are interested in, and that means So what does this mean for people (like myself ) who are creating self-sustaining outposts where missionaries, it is planning for upcoming short-term projects? What about the hoped, work themselves out of the job. professionals who cannot make a commitment to lifelong Western Christians want to help so badly that they missions like the saints of yesteryear or some courageous sometimes end up doing things for the people they are help- souls today? What about all the positive dimensions of being ing even when the people could be doing these things for involved in these trips? I feel most of the positive outcomes themselves. As Robert Lupton, who has served in inner-city of short-term mission trips (appreciation of new culture, re- Atlanta for 40 years, puts it in his book Toxic Charity, “Giving lationships, feelings of accomplishment, new perspective on to those in need what they could be gaining from their own life, etc.) will not be compromised by some changes. initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people.” First, short-term volunteers should work hard to do proj- Americans looking to help can focus too much energy on ects that are in partnership with long-term volunteers or aid what is lacking. Intelligent and affluent Christians come into agencies. Ideally, they can pair up with someone who has the downtrodden places of the world with grand ideas of made at least a two-year commitment to be in the thick of a reform and change. But these projects are likely to fail if the situation. Many missionaries are in it for the long haul, and helpers do not take into account what the community itself it is both arrogant and ignorant not to trust them and use feels it needs. Is it not logical that each community knows their connections. They have heard God’s call to serve in a its own strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else? special way, and we should respect that. Second, mission teams need to consider the type of aid they are giving and think hard about whether or not it is appropriate for the setting. Food and clothing donations may be appropriate at one time of year or location, but not others. If working with long-term missionaries, it is a safe bet that aid for development work may be the greater need. Third, the community that is being served must be in- cluded in the plans. This can be scary for people who have focused on policies, agendas and improvements. It requires humility to ask a group of people for suggestions, because it gives them governance, ownership and control. As Ron Blue, a professor in world missions and intercultural studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, says, “It appears to me that those of us in the North America empire are rather slow to yield control to others.” That loss of control is essential to effective mission work. We should not be discouraged from taking these life-changing trips, but rather encouraged to do them smart- er. I sincerely think a cross-cultural project of any kind is essential to gaining a wider perspective on the world, and my personal experience with this kind of work has resulted in dramatic shifts in how I view poverty. But it is time to look hard at the results and decide if we are tangibly making a difference in the world. Let us be the hands and feet of Christ in this world, working tirelessly and lovingly to build the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. A

26 America September 28, 2015 September 28, 2015 America 27 The Poetry of Catholicism The daily struggle between absurdity and faith BY JOHN SAVANT

he phrase “poetry of Catholicism” is the late Andrew Greeley’s, whose writing often revealed the poet in the social scientist. Interesting as it may be, it presents a topic of questionable rel- Tevance in this age of major challenges facing the Catholic Church—worldwide scandal, looming and significant structural changes and major reassessments of tradition- al teachings and practices. It is an age that reveals the old coziness of pre-Vatican II culture shaken beyond recovery. We have become accustomed to topics like “Why I Remain a Catholic” or “Why I Can No Longer Remain a Catholic” or “The Rediscovery of Radical Catholicism.” We find our- selves looking for solid intellectual and theological footing as we address the issues of change and identity, conscience and obedience, science and faith, church and state and more. In seeking this solid footing, it may at first blush seem fanciful, if not irresponsible, to turn to something so ethere- al as the “poetic” quality of American Catholic culture. We point with pride and assurance to quantifiable phenome- na—including our leadership in matters of social justice, our patriotic service in the battle against totalitarianism and our public contributions to health and education—areas in which our women religious especially have been regarded with affection and admiration by persons otherwise indif- ferent or hostile to things Catholic. Father Greeley, a respected sociologist, had something more Beyond such concrete evidence of Catholic participa- substantial in mind than sentimentality or cliché. His use tion in American life, however, we may still ask to what of the term assumes a reality, and we are provoked to ask extent that presence distinguishes the individual Catholic whether this “poetic” dimension of Catholicism renders it in American culture and, indeed, modern society. We can, a distinct force in American culture. Does it provoke public of course, point to the sentimentalizing of Catholic culture interest or response? Is “Catholic” as resonant a social mark- in popular entertainment—including stereotypes of the er as “puritanical” or “consumerist” or “neoconservative”? innocent (and often pretty) novice whose appealing sim- Does it evoke a distinct response when applied to an indi- plicity wins over the cynical financier and saves St. Pericula vidual? Academy from ruin; the tough-talking prison chaplain who In addressing this question we ought not to equate reaches the soft spot in the heart of the death-row killer; Greeley’s “poetry” with such heightening but limited usages the touching pieties, sometimes bordering on superstition, as “the agony of defeat” or “the bliss of a hole-in-one.” We of immigrant populations. Our comedians can feast, light- must here understand “poetry” as Aristotle seems to have ly or otherwise, on Catholic schooling, Catholic guilt and done—as an action of intuition and imagination taking Catholic sexual anxieties. form in aesthetic expression, and (most important) doing so Surely, in assigning a poetic quality to Catholic culture, because the truths, cautions and wisdom that formal actions convey cannot be communicated in any other way! Where concepts and language fall short of feelings, intuitions or JOHN SAVANT is emeritus professor of English at Dominican University musings beyond empirical reach, the formal structures of art of California in San Rafael, Calif. and mysticism strike a provocative resonance, as a wordless ANN KISSANE ENGELHART ART:

28 America September 28, 2015 cry in a dark cave may rouse a reassuring echo. in our daily lives, civic and private? What is there, for exam- ple, at an Irish wake in Boston or San Francisco that, with The Poetry of Catholicism Representing All the Arts both prayer and whiskey, celebrates triumph over despair, In his Poetics, Aristotle uses poetry to represent all the cre- hope over absurdity? What comfort in the clutch of mystery The daily struggle between absurdity and faith ative arts. He argues, in effect, that while history and physi- finds beauty in the sundown of a loved one’s life? cal sciences may deal with tangible particular facts, the arts What is there in our forgiveness of the killer that re- deems the killer latent in all of us? What justifies our don- ning the Mardi Gras demon mask, even as we renounce the demon? What music of image and sound embraces the mystery of loss in Hopkins’s autumnal lament, “though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie”? What is it in the daily Most important, feast of the Eucharist that assumes our woundings and our blessings into a community of sharers, into a common the poetry of “Thank you” that honors the gift of life more than it regrets the evil of suffering? In a society whose fascination with Catholicism health threatens to turn label reading into a genre, what moderating grace and countercultural intuitions move us to embraces the fret more over income disparity or bullying than over carbs or sagging jowls? What sacramental earthiness disposes us physical world— to act more out of a habitual compassion than out of an anxious propriety?

not as an enemy In the Shadow of Mystery Catholicism, of course, shares many of these dispositions of the sacred but with other traditions, but wherever the church has tak- en root, they take on a distinctive character born of our as a locus of the grounding in the pre-eminence of mystery. Robert Frost spoke of our need for “a mind of winter” in the face of dark- divine. ness. Catholics espouse “a mind of mystery” that often seems indifferent to secular paradigms; that, for example, regards virtue-for-itself with a dismissive arching of the brow that laces compassion with humor, that seeks solutions as much reach beyond the particulars of time and place to universal in wonder and contemplation as in knowledge. Walking truths that abide for all time. One formulation of this idea thus in the shadow of mystery and in a certain poetic goes: While history records what happened, art resonates openness to surprise and the discovery of value in simple with what happens—always. These universal truths, more- things, Catholics may be less susceptible to the distractions over, are conveyed not through philosophical concepts or of consumerism, the lure of popular trends, the narcissis- clinical explanations but through their resonance with our tic narrowing of self-realization systems that isolate our human sensibilities, moving us to recognize their validity crosses from the Gethsemanes of a suffering world. In the in our own lives. And it does this through the formal ac- sacramental grounding of our Jewish heritage, what Father tions we call the play, the dance, the sculpture or the poem. Greeley called “the Catholic imagination” seeks, more than The importance of the aesthetic sensibility, which the arts immediate resolutions, the lasting wisdom that trial and require and inspire, is caught in the striking observation of suffering effect in those who affirm life even in its darkest the American poet and business executive Wallace Stevens, manifestation—not in dour resignation to bad news but in who said, “We have imagination because we do not have rejection of pollyannish solutions indifferent to our history enough without it.” of fallibility—solutions latent with the possibility that “the Understanding poetry in this sense, we can then ex- last state shall be worse than the first.” plore what might be meant by “the poetry of Catholicism” Most important, the poetry of Catholicism embraces the in American culture. Apart from the phrase’s convention- physical world—not as an enemy of the sacred, but as a lo- al suggestion that there is something sublime or spiritual cus of the divine. Inspired by the ever emerging evidence or beyond ordinary language, what is there in American of cosmology and evolutionary study, many Catholic theo- Catholicism that, like poetry, strikes a meaningful resonance logians regard the unceasing evolution of the cosmos as a

September 28, 2015 America 29 template for an ongoing revelation and renewal in the life of the church. For believers, it is a template marked by ambigu- ity (we see now “as in a glass, darkly”) and, at times, by un- certainty and confusion; but it is also a template that urges openness to what is new, prayerful discernment and human creativity. It is a template consonant with an old descrip- tion of the church as “always herself, never the same.” This interplay of change and identity pervades all human culture and its arts. Contemplating the last of all temporal changes, Wallace Stevens, in his great poem of religious questioning, “Sunday Morning,” exclaims, “Death is the mother of beau- ty.” He is not the only poet to conclude that change—death to rebirth, suffering to wisdom—is the fundamental con- cern of poetry. Sharing this same poetic intuition, the church has es- poused and influenced the arts over the centuries—clearly in the very nature of the sacraments as external signs and vehicles of spiritual reality— but also in her prominent con- tribution to the aesthetic history of Western civilization. Granted, the formal poem (or statue or song) is something distinct from the poetic quality of a culture; still, a society’s art and culture do indeed interact profoundly. In both eccle- sial and cultural lore, the aesthetic represents a moral ener- gy that affects behavior and effects identity. The enormous changes in every aspect of our lives today and the sustaining images of our Catholic tradition are the everlasting stuff of drama and poetry: images of the unknown, of journey and pilgrimage, of suffering and transformation, of blindness and vision, of fall and redemption, death and rebirth; evolu- tionary images of violence and loss engendering ever greater beauty and complexity—the list goes on. And all this, in one way or another, the poetic energies that challenge, sustain and transform us! When I am asked, in the face of current scandals and ac- cusations leveled against my church, why I remain a Catholic, it is this very earth—turbulent, horrific and unspeakably beautiful—that is my referent. As one who justifies his ad- diction to sports as a cathartic form of ritual, I find, in the whirlwind of cosmic change, the great drama and challenge of this earth become conscious of itself in the human per- son—that same person so perversely and elegantly tragic and divine. This drama enacts the daily struggle between the absurdity of evil and our mulish, Job-like persistence in faith—and this against the glorious, frightening freedom to choose between these. And it is, finally, the trump card of hope that you slam before the fiercely humorous face of the divine, as you cry out, “Take that!” If we can manage this pilgrimage—a miracle of grace be- yond our merit—we can count upon an army of celebrants, here and departed, marching, in fact or figure, away from our wakes, glasses raised on high, reciting poems more beautiful than any we can imagine. A

30 America September 28, 2015 VATICAN DISPATCH In China, Fear of Faith hina is hard to decipher. This is Then, for the first time since Francis’ Department that religions must be in- true not only in the field of pol- election, a bishop was ordained in dependent of foreign influence, and Citics and economics but also in China on Aug. 4, 2015, with papal ap- domestic religious groups must pledge that of religion and, in particular, Sino- proval. This was greeted with relief in loyalty to the state. “We must manage Vatican relations. the Vatican and widely interpreted as religious affairs in accordance with the Since he became pope in March a signal that Beijing is willing to work law and adhere to the principle of in- 2013, Francis has extended the hand with Rome. But Cardinal Joseph Zen dependence to run religious groups on of friendship to the Chinese leadership, in his blog queried this positive inter- our own accord,” he stated. “Active ef- seeking to reopen communications. pretation, raised some incisive ques- forts should be made to incorporate re- He has never once criticized China for tions and said the Vatican accepted an ligions into socialist society,” Xi added. its (mis)treatment of religion or the ordination totally controlled by Beijing. Some observers charge that with the Catholic Church, but instead prayed for Besides all this, some May 2014 national secu- all the mainland’s believers and citizens events over the past two The crack- rity alert and Xi’s speech and extended solidarity in moments of years have raised funda- Beijing contributed to, national tragedy. Furthermore, he ap- mental questions as to down if not stoked, a back- pointed as secretary of state Cardinal how Beijing really views lash against Christians Pietro Parolin, the man who almost religion, Christianity and against and the growth of reached an accord with Beijing in 2009 Catholicism (“The Western Christianity Christianity in China, on the crucial question of the nomi- religion”). and against Islam too. nation of bishops and now oversees At one level, it has be- has taken That crackdown against the China brief. As a result of Francis’ come increasingly clear that various Christianity has tak- approach, Sino-Vatican talks reopened some high ranking members en various forms, some in Rome in June 2014, and a second of China’s Communist Party forms. reminiscent of the cul- round is expected to be held in Beijing fear religion in general, espe- tural revolution, includ- in the coming months. cially Christianity but also Islam. This ing detention of clergy, re-education China, for its part, gave clearance fear is also expressed in the “Blue Book” programs, church demolitions and the to Francis’ plane to fly through its air- released in Beijing on May 6, 2014, by removal of 1,200 crosses from church- space on his journey to and from Korea the University of International relations es in Zhejiang Province, an event that in August 2014. And its media have and the Social Science Academic Press, brought public protests from Christians constantly reported on the pope in a which identified religion as one of the and the two Chinese cardinals, Zen and neutral, even positive way, and never four “severe challenges” to China’s na- Tong. using negative tones. Earlier this year, tional security. It claimed “the infiltra- Over the past three months, two the Chinese language broadcaster tion of religion has constituted a threat excommunicated Chinese bishops or- Phoenix TV, based in Hong Kong but to Chinese identification with socialist dained priests in their dioceses in defi- close to Beijing, presented a program belief ” and said “Western hostile forc- ance of church law. Some blame local, on the Vatican and the appointment es are infiltrating China’s religions in a not central authorities for the cross re- of bishops that included an interview more diverse way and in a wider range; movals and priestly ordinations but of- with Vatican spokesman, Federico deploying more subtle means either fered little evidence for this thesis. Lombardi, S.J. And in August, in an un- openly or secretly; and are strongly Then, on Sept. 4, UCA News, citing precedented move, the same TV outlet seditious and deceptive in nature.” It an unnamed source close to the Vatican, broadcasted Francis’ words of solidarity affirmed that “foreign religious infiltra- reported that the second round of Sino- following the Tianjin disaster. tion powers have penetrated all areas of Vatican talks are expected to be held “in the Chinese society.” a few months.” It noted, however, that GERARD O’CONNELL is America’s Rome Next, President Xi, in a widely Cardinals Zen and Tong differ on what correspondent. America’s Vatican coverage is sponsored in part by the Jesuit communities of publicized speech, May 20, 2015, told might result from this. Stay tuned. the United States. Twitter: @gerryrome. top officials of the United Front Work GERARD O’CONNELL

September 28, 2015 America 31 FAITH IN FOCUS Good Fruit A parolee readies for life beyond prison. BY VALERIE SCHULTZ he thing I remember best board’s decision, to allow for review. waiting period, wanting only to stay about Louie is that he said For a murder conviction—not all life out of trouble for their blessedly fi- The hadn’t had a peach in 30 sentences are for murder—an addi- nite days of captivity. The library has years. Louie (not his real name) become a little hub of hope for was a lifer; he was in his 50s and inmates who had never expected had been in prison for over three to feel such an emotion. They decades. On the day he told me suddenly had work to do. this, as he was hanging out in the So Louie was spending a lot library where I work, a couple of hours in the library, killing of landscape workers were rip- time, talking about the past and ping out two trees in the chapel the future and helping some of courtyard. The trees in question his fellow lifers whose board had grown from saplings and had dates were approaching. He talk- turned out to be fruit trees, sus- ed about his family, his daugh- pected peach trees, and so had ter who was now an adult, the to be removed from the prison grandkids he had yet to meet, grounds before they bore any the house his dad had left him, fruit. This is because fruit can the work he hoped to do with be fermented into alcohol by in- at-risk young gangbangers. He ventive inmates. Which explains had been a gang member in his why Louie had not had a peach day, deviant and up to no good, in 30 years. until he’d been convicted of mur- Louie had recently been found suit- tional 30 days are tacked on, during der along with his partner in crime, or able for parole at his hearing with the which time the governor can reverse crimee. It was hard for me to imagine parole board, a ritual that inmates with the board’s decision. Past governors Louie as a young and ruthless hood- life sentences endure every so many had almost always taken this route. lum because I knew him as a thought- years. A typical board hearing used to More and more, however, the governor ful intelligent, serene presence on the end in an almost certain denial, but has been upholding the board’s suit- yard. He’d obviously put his years in because of a sea change in public atti- ability findings. prison to good use. He had become tude from a preference for punishment The new normal of the parole board educated and enlightened and rehabil- to an interest in rehabilitation, along has prompted many lifers to take their itated. His crimee had been released with a federal court order to reduce the hearings seriously for the first time in from another prison the year before. state prison population, now prisoners decades. They come to the library to Now it was his turn. are sometimes emerging from their organize their paperwork, make copies Louie’s thoughts were full of fami- hearings with a dazed look and a piece of favorable work reports and letters ly and freedom and peaches. He talk- of paper that reads “Parole granted.” A of support, write letters of remorse to ed about looking forward to having a waiting period of 120 days follows the their victims and/or their victims’ fam- burger at Carl’s Jr., whose television ilies, look up addresses of helpful enti- commercials were relentless on the ties on the outside, formulate practical prison screens. I reminded him that VALERIE SCHULTZ, a freelance writer, is a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and parole plans and network with lifers he might be better satisfied at In-N- the author of Closer: Musings on Intimacy, who already have been found suitable Out Burger, the iconic burger place of

Marriage, and God. and were somehow living through the California. He’d forgotten about In-N- SEAN QUIRK ART:

32 America September 28, 2015 Out. He was almost dizzy with the an- months now. The last time I went to In- back or fully atone for the life taken, ticipation of such good fortune as to be N-Out, I pictured Louie in his parole or erase a family’s grief. But if we be- able to walk into a fast-food restaurant clothes, with his cry-like-a-baby tears lieve in God’s redemptive love, we have and order whatever the heck he want- dried on the car ride, walking through to believe that every single one of us ed. Such freedom was almost unimag- the door, grinning when a teenager can change, can be forgiven, can be re- inable after 30 years. “That’s the first with a chipper voice asked to take his deemed. The power of God’s compas- place I’m gonna go; the first thing I’m order, pulling his gate money out of sion is so much greater than ours, after gonna do,” he said. “In-N-Out. Where’s his pocket and paying with cash for all. Louie may very well alter the course the closest one?” the first time in 30 years. The thought of some young man’s life by sharing his As his release date drew closer and made me appreciate my French fries story, by offering his guidance, by giving the governor did not reverse the board’s like never before. the benefit of his journey of remorse decision, as he was finally called in to I picture Louie’s grandkids teaching and renewal. His presence may save sign his final parole paperwork and him how to use a smartphone, or how some other precious and holy life. I will find out the day of his physical release, to Google. I picture him with peach never know. Louie became philosophical. “I’m look- juice on his chin, with a big bowl of I will quite probably never see Louie ing forward to the burgers,” he said, on peaches and pears and grapes and mel- again; indeed, as long as I work in the one of the last days he came into the on and berries on the table in his home. library of a state prison, I am not al- library, “but really, the first thing I’m Some people might say that Louie lowed to have any contact with parol- probably gonna do when I go through does not deserve to be out of prison, ees. But I think of Louie every time that last gate is fall on my knees and cry that the life he took should be paid for I eat a peach, and the world seems a like a baby.” with his own. No one knows better more hopeful place with him out there Louie has been gone for about three than a murderer that he can never give somewhere. Cafeteria Prayers Mass at an immigrant detention facility BY MAURICE TIMOTHY REIDY

ast winter I traveled to Florence, Ariz., to a federal detention fa- Lcility one hour north of Tucson, where we celebrated a liturgy with 50 men who rarely have a chance to at- tend Mass and who are separated from their families and friends. We sang hymns together, prayed together and exchanged the sign of peace. I tried to follow along in Spanish. We were unable to bring cameras or cell phones into the facility, so I will try to give a picture of an event that was very moving for everyone involved. The Mass was celebrated by Kevin White, S.J., of Jesuit Refugee Service. J.R.S. has a contract with the govern-

MAURICE TIMOTHY REIDY is an executive

ART: BOB ECKSTEIN ART: editor of America.

September 28, 2015 America 33 ment to provide chaplains to federal The facility in Florence is tidy and and buses travel daily to the border detention centers, and as a new board well maintained, with an outdoor soc- town of Nogales in Mexico. Others member I traveled with them to visit cer field and common rooms where would be there longer as they appealed some of their ministries near the bor- detainees can gather and watch televi- their detention or sought asylum. The der. Sister Lynn Allvin, a Dominican, sion. The director of the facility takes average stay is three weeks. is the chaplain at the Florence facility pride in its appearance and pointed out, The men looked very young. They and helped to organize the liturgy. She during a tour, how meticulously the were on the short side, and all wore the celebrates a weekly Communion ser- trash is disposed of and how the cooling same government-issued slippers. The vice for the detainees and assists with system recirculates air to cut down on facility is only for adult males, but de- counseling. odor. But it still looks like a prison, with termining the age of a detainee can be There are currently 15 immigration barbed wire fences, bathrooms with no difficult. Dentists are brought in to look detention centers in the United States. doors or curtains and dormitories with at their wisdom teeth to try to figure Some, like the facility in Florence, are dozens of bunk beds under harsh fluo- out their age. The men were dressed run directly by the government, under rescent lights. in blue or orange uniforms, the color the aegis of U.S. Immigration Customs We celebrated Mass in the cafeteria. designating their security status in the and Enforcement. Others are operat- Many of the men who attended were facility. There were no inmates dressed ed by private contractors. The govern- from Central America, others from in red, which indicates a high-risk de- ment is also opening separate facilities Mexico, at least one from Haiti. Some tainee. for women and children to cope with of them were picked up trying to cross We were given stapled-together the influx of families and unaccompa- the border, but others had lived in the songbooks and a pamphlet with the nied minors from Central America in United States for years. A simple traf- readings and responses in English and 2014. In a recent report, the U.S. bish- fic stop led to their arrest and pend- Spanish. Sister Lynn hung a cross from ops called for an end to the detention ing deportation. Some men would be the wall and designated the songs on system in favor of community supervi- in the detention center for only a few a banner using felt numbers. A man sion and support programs for undocu- days. The government runs planes to played guitar and he and two others led mented immigrants. Guatemala from Phoenix every week, us in song. One of these men, we later

34 America September 28, 2015 learned, has been in the United States for more than 10 years and was now separated from his wife and children. The readings were recited by the de- tainees, one in English, one in Spanish. The Gospel for the day told the story of Jesus’ return to Capernaum, where he was soon discovered at home by the crowds. To the paralytic, who was lowered through the roof to be near him, he said, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” In his homily, Father Kevin White acknowledged that the men before us were on a difficult journey, but he assured the detainees God is with them. I don’t remember if he used the word “accompaniment,” but it was the principal theme of our trip. We could not do anything for these men but be with them. One man spent most of the Mass on his knees, his hands held up in prayer. Other men looked distraught, but some were smiling—more than I would have expected. I sat to the left of the detainees, next to the soda machines, with staff and board members from J.R.S. We were greeted with applause upon our arriv- al, and a few men made their way over to us during the sign of peace to give us their hands. I wondered what they knew about us and why we were there. The Mass lasted about an hour. The microphone didn’t always work, and at the end Sister Lynn asked who in the congregation was celebrating a birth- day this month. A few men raised their hands. There were at least two guards in the room. Occasionally we could hear their radios go off. At the end of Mass, some of the men came up to us again, said hello and shook our hands. We did not learn their names. Many of them are known to staff only by their “alien number.” Sister Lynn tries to learn their names and on occasion will call them Mr. García or Mr. Pérez. The men often leave the facility abruptly. One day they are there, the next they are gone. The chaplains of- ten don’t get to say goodbye, but some- times they do. Sister Lynn tells them that they will see each other again in heaven. A

September 28, 2015 America 35 36 America September 28, 2015 Books & Culture

you might instinctively reach for the FILM | JOHN ANDERSON bear repellent.) It should be noted that the central TRAIL BLAZERS activity of “A Walk in the Woods,” ably directed by Ken Kwapis (“The Office,” Stories of recovery and rebuilding “Big Miracle”) and majestically shot by the veteran cinematographer John ome people reach a crossroads Robert Redford has been a major Bailey, is no stroll around the park. in their spiritual life and go on movie star at least since 1969 (“Butch Based on travel writer/humorist Bill Sa religious retreat. Others accel- Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”). He is Bryson’s memoir of 1998, it involves erate their drinking. Others still might an Oscar-winning director, producer, the author’s post-midlife crisis and change jobs, mates or majors or buy ardent environmentalist, film festival his decision to hike the Appalachian a gym membership (and even use it). macher and, lest we forget, actor. (“All Trail—a glorious piece of real es- The thing is, the moment for a psychic Is Lost,” the 2013 drama that featured tate that stretches nearly 2,200 miles tune-up doesn’t come on any schedule. his virtually wordless, one-man per- through 14 states, from Georgia to It arrives when it must, whether we are formance, was a reminder that he has Maine, requires six months to travel in 16 or 60. always had chops.) Nick Nolte has its entirety, is visited by three million Keeping that in mind, A Walk in enjoyed a long bout with stardom, too, people annually and was completed the Woods—which, as has been not- probably since TV’s “Rich Man, Poor in 1937 (and is part of the National ed, is a road movie without a road— Man” (1976), and thanks to having led Park System, just FYI). Redford had should have universal appeal, despite an apparently more libertine lifestyle been trying to bring the book to the the fact that the guys who carry us than Redford’s, is easily the older ac- screen since 2004 and originally in- through it can barely carry themselves tor’s match in wheeziness. (If Nolte tended it to be the third collaboration and are on the distant side of 60. wandered into your campsite at night, between himself and Paul Newman (who died in 2008). He ROAD WARRIORS. Robert Redford and Nick is considerably older now Nolte on the Appalachian Trail in “A Walk in the than Bryson was when he Woods.” made the trek. The trek probably seemed like a crazy idea in the ’90s. It certainly does now. Mrs. Bryson agrees. Played by Emma Thompson with her English propriety, she thinks the whole idea is horrifying and gets her husband to agree that if he is going to do it, he is not going to do it alone. Which is a shrewd move, because Bryson gets turned down by every- one he invites along (it’s a six-month commitment, c’mon). Enter Stephen Katz (Nolte), someone PHOTO: FRANK MASI, SMPSP / BROAD GREEN PICTURES

September 28, 2015 America 37 Bryson never even thought to call, but decision to walk the Appalachian Trail the way, and whom, make for the who heard secondhand that Bryson is a desperation move, perhaps, but same kinds of episodes that tradi- was looking for a traveling companion. not unwise: As soon as Bryson gets tionally constitute any picaresque, or A recovering alcoholic, untrimmed, un- outdoors and away from a particular buddy movie, or road film. (This in- fit and generally unpresentable, Katz strain of civilization, he relaxes. So cludes Emilio Estevez’s’ 2010 film “The had a falling out some Way,” about pilgrims on El decades earlier with the Camino de Santiago, a film well-put-together Bryson, with thematic similarities who seems close to his to “Walk” but fewer jokes.) temperamental opposite. Bryson’s preparations As a road show, however, for the hike involve a they click. trip to an outdoor store, While Nolte plays a where the hiking “pro” sort of mournful rep- (the consistently funny robate (Philip Roth Nick Offerman) knows so fans might be remind- much about the minutiae ed of Mickey Sabbath), Chris Pine, Chiwetel Ejiofor and of camp gear it’s comically Redford’s performance Margot Robbie in “Z for Zachariah.” absurd, and drives home is more complicated. just how in over his head At the beginning of the Bryson really is. Very early film, whether the Bryson on, after he and Katz hit character is doing an uncomfortable does the viewer. the trail, they encounter a know-it-all TV interview or just walking around You can’t escape people entire- hiker (“Daily Show” regular Kristen his suburban house (he’s a recent ex- ly, though, and since “A Walk in the Schaal) whom they can neither get ex-pat who’s been living in the United Woods” has almost no story—two away from nor get to shut up. Can they Kingdom), he seems clearly unsettled, guys basically walk from here to ditch her? Only in the most awkward out of his element, at loose ends. The there—what they encounter along manner possible. Katz has a run-in PHOTO: FCOURTESY OF ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS PHOTO: FCOURTESY

38 America September 28, 2015 with the jealous boyfriend of a woman girls on screen, namely, “Didn’t anyone sound—Robbie, in particular, is won- he hits on at a laundromat; Redford ever tell you to leave town and try your derfully understated and gentle and has a flirtation with a motel keeper luck in Hollywood?” Robbie’s presence Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave’) is consistent- (Mary Steenburgen), whose mother is a little like that, but she overcomes it ly one of the best actors currently work- is suffering from dementia and who to a great extent through what is an al- ing. And the story is the kind that tries seems trapped in her little bubble of most old-fashioned portrayal of a girl the soul, forcing the viewer to question hospitality, watching the world hike by. who’s lost everything but her faith. what he or she would do if, heaven It’s not heavy; it’s not wildly sig- Arriving on the scene in what looks forbid, such a fate would befall them. nificant. But “A Walk in the Woods” like a spacesuit is Loomis (Chiwetel We needn’t imagine disasters, they are has a redemptive tone, a gentle lesson Ejiofor), who as luck would have it is a all around, from civil wars in Central about aging and limitations and never research engineer who happened to be America to 3-year-olds washing up on giving up despite any required climb, in a government bunker when the blast Turkish beaches. But the prospect of uphill or otherwise. It’s also intended (or whatever it was) took place. Loomis such an epic calamity as occurs in “Z to serve the allegedly underserved au- knows how to get things back in work- for Zachariah” poses different kinds of dience of people over, say, 40 (50?) and ing order: he needs to create a huge wa- questions. Would our belief system be who should really think twice before ter wheel to pump from a nearby falls reinforced or demolished? Would the deciding to embark on any 2,200-mile and generate electricity. He just needs tasks, not just of surviving but of re- constitutional, no matter how beauti- additional muscle, which arrives courte- building, be more than one could stand? ful this movie makes it look. sy of Caleb (Chris Pine), who happened “Z for Zachariah” is an entertainment, A different kind of quasi-bucolic to be in a coal mine when the disaster of course. But there’s nothing wrong landscape provides the backdrop to took place. Caleb is white, Loomis is with entertainment that also probes the Z for Zachariah, a post-apocalyptic black; both are attracted to the fair- mind and heart. scenario mercifully free of zombies but skinned Ann. The conflicts to be might rich in intellectual stimuli and biblical as well be posted on a billboard. JOHN ANDERSON is a film critic for The Wall allusions. The setting serves as a min- At the same time, “Z” is dramatically Street Journal, TIME magazine and Newsday. iature Eden, a valley that, for meteoro- logical reasons or elevation or whatev- er, has been spared the radiation that seems to have destroyed much of the world outside. The only survivor we see, at first, is Ann (Margot Robbie), who has grown up on the farm where she lives (the setting seems to be West Virginia) and makes resourceful use of what has been left behind by the dead and missing. She plays a small organ in the church her father built and where he preached. The others in her family left to help during the crisis. They nev- er came back. Directed by Craig Zobel and based on a generally fine screenplay by Nissar Modi, “Z for Zachariah” begs our indulgence about a lot of things, as most films in its genre do. Robbie, who made such a splash in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and might have gotten typecast because of it, is an entirely different character here, absurdly good and ridiculously beautiful. A friend of this reviewer always poses the same question to the simple, small-town

September 28, 2015 America 39 OF OTHER THINGS | BILL Mc GARVEY DATA-DETERMINISM

mazon is in the vanguard of clusion of more visceral and emotional standing these entrepreneurs.” where technology wants to ways of understanding human exis- “We’re now in a knowledge view of ‘A take the modern office: more tence. Remember when the world spun the world,” he said. “Most of the prob- nimble and more productive, but on the axis of two polarities: Marxism lems in the world could be solved by harsher and less forgiving,” said a report versus capitalism? Today, the Marxist more access to information and more in The New York Times, on Aug. 15. view of mankind through an economic critical thinking.” For those who are It was difficult to read The Times’s lens has been replaced with the merito- not gifted in that department, Schmidt recent investigation of Amazon’s work- cratic vision of Technological Man. This said, “the technology that I’m describing place culture and not be reminded of vision rewards particular skills and I.Q. improves the dumb people’s opportuni- Thomas Hobbes’ description of man- and can be hugely prof- ties, too.” He closed by kind’s state of nature. “Nasty, brutish, itable. In the abstract it saying that he hoped and short” didn’t seem all that different is immensely seductive. Metrics he had given us “a sense from the reality of many workers at the In reality it can reduce that we’re busy build- online retail giant. human beings to ab- and efficiency ing a future that’s even In the controversial piece, details stractions with breath- have become better than the good fu- emerged from current and former em- taking ease. ture we have right now.” ployees about Amazon’s “purposeful That reality was the lifeblood I was astonished Darwinism,” in which practices like put in sharp relief last at his utter faith in offering employees official channels for November in a private of our technological prog- giving “secret feedback to one another’s talk I attended given by technocracy. ress. If Pope Francis bosses” is encouraged. One former em- Eric Schmidt, executive viewed the church as a ployee said he had seen nearly everyone chairman of Google, field hospital offering he worked with cry at their desks. An hosted by Justice Ruth healing after a battle, oft-repeated phrase at headquarters Bader Ginsburg at the Schmidt clearly viewed was that “Amazon is where overachiev- U.S. Supreme Court. the world as a series of ers go to feel bad about themselves.” The event was spon- problems to be solved Sadly, this troubling characteriza- sored by the Salzburg from a software engi- tion didn’t surprise me. In the age of Global Seminar, which neer’s brain. I wondered Big Data, metrics and efficiency have has worked for 70 years what metrics could be become the lifeblood of our technoc- as a catalyst for engagement around the applied to the compassion, mercy and racy. Amazon’s culture is simply the world on issues of education, health, empathy Francis spoke of? What sort evolutionary result of this 21st-century environment, economics, peace etc. of “intelligence” was that? And would I ethos. The subject of the talk was privacy, free really want to live in a world without it? “Data creates a lot of clarity around speech and technology; the message that Jobs, Gates, Bezos and Zuckerberg decision-making,” said one Amazon di- came across, however, resonated in ways are the 21st century’s Edison, Bell, vision head; it is “incredibly liberating.” that I’m sure were unintended. Carnegie and Morgan. They are inven- I have no doubt that it has been liberat- In a room filled with highly accom- tors and digital industrialists who have ing but it is also limiting in ways we do plished lawyers who were deeply con- changed the modern world. Through not yet fully comprehend. cerned with issues of social justice, Mr. their innovations we have rediscovered In the information age, we have Schmidt seemed blithely optimistic. fire. As we continue to navigate our way embraced the language and priorities He possessed a bourgeois confidence through this era of profound change, of technological intelligence to the ex- that the harsh realities of the world the critical task will be to ensure that beyond that august chamber would be this fire is used to warm and illuminate BILL McGARVEY, a musician and writer, is the solved by the smart, “crazy” and “real- and not to burn and destroy. Making author of The Freshman Survival Guide, ly, really arrogant” engineers he works those distinctions however will require owner of CathNewsUSA.com and was the long- time editor in chief of BustedHalo.com. Twitter: with. Our challenge is to continue to qualities that can’t be measured on an @billmcgarvey. “build your culture around under- I.Q. test.

40 America September 28, 2015 BOOKS | MARGARET O’BRIEN STEINFELS their names, the reader has plausi- ble reason to question the retelling of A JESUIT BOY’S QUEST events long over while spinning them to cast doubts. The account of the two Jesuits, FRANCIS ly archbishop of Buenos Aires. Burns Francisco Jalics and Orlando Yorio, im- Pope of Good Promise retells it all, and then some. Eventually prisoned and tortured in 1976 by the By Jimmy Burns this Argentine background will fade military is repeated with emphasis on St. Martin’s Press. 432p $28.99 and the papacy of Francis will take Yorio’s claim that Bergoglio betrayed front and center in assessing him. them. Jalics has told another story (that Francis: Pope of Good Promise has the Until then, Burns reprises Bergoglio’s it was a local catechist who gave their contours of a picaresque tale mixed conflicted history with the Argentine names while being tortured). Of this with a journalist’s quest. Jimmy Burns, Jesuits, his opaque relations with war- version we hear little. Emilio Mignone, the prize-winning author of books ring Peronist political factions and the who early on naïvely urged his daugh- about the Falklands War and inter- oft-repeated charges that he grievous- ter to cooperate with the military and national soccer, goes in search of the ly failed in his responsibilities during never saw her again, later claimed Argentine Jesuit become pope. Burns that Bergoglio did nothing to save the establishes his bona fides: Born of an Jesuits or others. In spite of witnesses Anglo-Spanish family, with its con- to the contrary, Burns generalizes these sequent variations on Catholicism, charges to what he sees as Bergoglio’s he is educated at Stonyhurst College failure to rescue the “disappeared.” In a in England where he is introduced peculiar aside, he argues that the Jesuit to Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality. In could have followed Oskar Schindler’s this, he recognizes an affinity between example in saving Jews during World Jorge Bergoglio’s spiritual world and War II by putting them to work in his own experience as a “Jesuit boy.” A his factory. (As it happens Schindler pilgrimage to Ignatian sites and vari- moved to Argentina, where he died in ous shrines from France to Spain and 1974.) Bergoglio’s ultimate failure, in eventually Rome brings Burns into Burns’s judgment: He did not become conversation with Jesuits and oth- a martyr in a long Jesuit tradition. (This ers, who have various opinions about gave me pause: What is Burns’s theolo- the new pope. Closing Chapter One, gy of martyrdom?) Is there a secret fifth Burns spots another affinity with vow for Jesuits? Bergoglio, love of soccer. An outsider to these events and There is a brief stop-off in Chapter their conflicting accounts can under- Two to reflect on the election of stand the stress and regrets of those Benedict and his resignation. Finally, terrible times (even Mignone’s harsh in Chapter Three, we have “Habemus Argentina’s dirty war (1976-83). judgment), but still ask why Bergoglio’s Papam Francisco” with post-hoc ob- None of this will be news to readers account isn’t as credible as his accusers’: servations about the inevitability of of Paul Vallely’s Pope Francis or Austen He asked the two to leave their mis- Bergoglio’s election. Not only pica- Ivereigh’s The Great Reformer. Burns’s sion; he warned them of trouble; when resque but sprawling, Francis repeats multiple, and often anonymous, sourc- he found out where they were impris- much that we have heard before and es leave open rather than resolve the oned, he, along with others, worked probes events that raise doubts about charges brought against Bergoglio af- to have them freed. When they were Francis’ courage, if not integrity. ter the dirty war ended, repeated again freed, he got them out of Argentina. At some point, we will know all after he became archbishop of Buenos The Kirchner presidencies (Nestor, there is to know about Bergoglio: the Aires and revived once more when he 2003–7; Cristina, 2008–15) high- Italian immigrant family, the happy became pope. Who are the sources light the convoluted role of Argentine childhood, the beloved grandmother, of these parting shots? Interlocutors church-state relations, formal and in- the soccer fan, the lung infection, sem- whom Burns “met on this journey but formal. If Bergoglio, by then archbishop inary, ordination, Jesuit rector and asked not to be named.” If anonymous of Buenos Aires, held private meetings provincial, auxiliary bishop and final- sources have plausible reason to mask to reconcile warring Peronist factions,

September 28, 2015 America 41 was that duplicitous or prudent? If his the facts, factoids, gossip and opinion Meanwhile, media and government re- predecessor enjoyed warm relations gathered on this journey, the tale lacks ports focused on why: The hurricane with President Menem, is Bergoglio coherence, chronology, footnotes and a was an act of nature (or God, as a few picking a fight with the Kirchners or credible bibliography. Even Bergoglio thundering zealots claimed, wreaking asserting episcopal independence? Is seems to fade in the hustle and bus- vengeance on a Babylonian river city). there really a secret tunnel connect- tle of the “Jesuit boy’s” quest. Perhaps But human error caused the flood: the ing the presidential palace and the the papal visit to the United States flawed design and oversight of levees chancery? Gossip about Argentina’s prompted a rush into print when by a federal agency, the U.S. Army tortuous politics allows Burns to raise greater discernment (another Jesuit Corps of Engineers. suspicions about Bergoglio’s political practice) was in order. That information set in motion a views and Peronist leanings, whether In one more peculiar aside, Burns grinding process by which Congress to clarify or cast aspersions is never dismisses Austen Ivereigh (The Great and federal agencies eventually sent clear. Thus ends part one. Reformer) as “a Catholic author who tens of billions of recovery dollars to In Part Two, assessing Francis’ first holds his subject in unwavering rev- the city’s slow recovery—$70 billion year in office, walking and talking, as he erence.” Yet Ivereigh delivers a clearly from FEMA alone, which shows in the says “among the faithful,” Burns offers written and chronologically coherent widespread infrastructure work pres- impressions of a shanty town, World story without Burns’s score-settling ently underway. Youth Day in Brazil, the Vatican bank- (and holds his subject in wavering In the recent tenth anniversary me- ing scandal, Catholic women, the sex reverence). If the title, The Great dia coverage, New Orleans stood ro- abuse scandal, etc. How is Francis do- Reformer seems too enthusiastic be- bust with clean streets, cranes dotting ing? At the end of his quest from Jesuit fore the event, then “Pope of Good the horizon, a booming digital econo- prep school to pope-watching, Burns Promise” seems a bit stingy after two my and a film industry creating a city suggests, “promising” (signaled in the years. Perhaps even now, there is an- of the young. The town still has deep subtitle, “Pope of Good Promise”). other pilgrim writing yet another poverty, and nightly news is a show on Promising? Perhaps the same conclu- book, “Francis: A Breath of Fresh Air.” urban homicide. sion Stonyhurst Jesuits came to about The New Orleans comeback was MARGARET O’BRIEN STEINFELS was editor young Jimmy Burns. of Commonweal and co-director of the Fordham never guaranteed, as Gary Rivlin re- Do I sound underwhelmed? For all Center on Religion and Culture. ports in his account of the political machinations in this textured and in- telligent book. Most of the narrative fo- JASON BERRY cuses on the two years after the storm, far less on the role that Mitch Landrieu NEW ORLEANS, BORN AGAIN played after winning the 2010 may- oralty, at which point KATRINA second presidential the federal money flow After the Flood term. A superpower gained momentum By Gary Rivlin battling in Iraq and and rebuilding accel- Simon & Schuster. 480p $27 Afghanistan was inca- erated. A New York pable of rescuing peo- Times reporter who For most Americans, Hurricane ple in a flooded city. covered the Katrina Katrina was a disaster story with sat- This was the country aftermath, Rivlin be- urated coverage that ran for several that sent rockets to the came a freelance, kept weeks, starting Aug. 29, 2005, when moon? A more complex coming back, and in a the levees surrounding New Orleans story began after flood- fair-minded way cap- broke under Gulf of Mexico storm waters drained in an tures the struggle of surges driven into outlying lakes. Video area seven times the size ordinary people remak- loops of people on rooftops, squalor in of Manhattan Island. ing their lives, or losing the Louisiana Superdome and a good- Eighty per cent of the what they had, amid times city reduced to a broken mud city had taken water, at the complex politics. town left lasting images on the nation- an average level of four Rivlin’s account of al psyche. feet: tens of thousands of homeown- the blunders by Mayor Ray Nagin Katrina wrecked George W. Bush’s ers began battling insurance adjustors. (now holding an endowed chair in a

42 America September 28, 2015 federal penitentiary, for shaking down chose a MidCity neighborhood, where costs—one-fifth of the city’s precious contractors) is restrained. He faults homeowners with the federal grants flex dollars.” Nagin for relying on President George had returned and rebuilt, to provide Decisions like that made it harder W. Bush to deliver recovery mon- acreage for building a hospital-medical for many people to return and rebuild. ey, while Bush’s handlers waited for complex. “The city needed sixty-seven Yet another strand of the Katrina nar- Nagin’s plan. Although Rivlin cites the acres,” he writes, “which meant tearing rative is how certain people with means crimes Nagin committed, he avoids down or moving 250 homes, 150 of saw the wounded city as an organism saying outright the lesson of Katrina: which had been deemed ‘historically worth helping. Barnes & Noble’s chair- that the big-person theory of history significant’ by the National Trust for man, Len Riggio, and his wife, Louise, prevails. Bush was incompetent, Nagin Historic Preservation.” The Veterans provided $20 million from their family a narcissist whose racial demagoguery Administration was relocating its hos- foundation “to create energy efficient secured his 2006 re-election, following pital on the new site. “Blakely prom- homes elevated above the flood plain.” which he betrayed his black political ised them $75 million in HUD disas- Bruce Springsteen donated $100,000 base with corruption on top of in- ter money to offset their construction to the Common Ground project, a competence. In contrast, L.B.J. flew straight to New Orleans in 1965 after Hurricane Betsy and told people in a darkened school that he and the country were C 49 behind them. One can imagine Bill Clinton or the elder George Bush or You can’t tell from these clouds former Mayor Moon Landrieu (Mitch’s why this afternoon was set on fire dad) using their formidable skills to ignite a strong response. Electing sub- is burning through some lullaby standard people is a mirror on national or local character. Heraclitus was right: you’re singing to yourself character is fate. Rivlin uses a deft hand orchestrat- by gathering a few leaves, some twigs ing a dramatis personae of politicians, for the gentleness falling out your mouth planners, activists, policy advocates and grassroots change-agents across the narrative stage. I could betray a —you dead know how it is, each hush bias, as a New Orleanian who came must be buried on the way back back (blessedly) to a dry house, in with lips that bleed when rinsed in rainwater saying that Rivlin fails to capture the profound role of musicians and tradi- tion-bearers who brought the culture leaving a sky that no longer takes root back—Wynton Marsalis arguably is drifting into its hiding place did more to save New Orleans than and each night listens for the word after word Nagin—but Rivlin casts a wide net without losing focus on the deep injus- tices borne by poor blacks, particular- returning as the small stones around you ly those with valid leases in well-built that warm your hands, that listen the way smoke housing projects the city chose to de- molish. reaches out from ashes and step by step. The Congressionally funded Road Home program with an initial $7.5 SIMON PERCHIK billion outlay allowed tens of thou- sands of homeowners to make repairs SIMON PERCHIK is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Poetry, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is that insurance did not cover. Almost Rain, published by River Otter Press (2013). Meanwhile, as Rivlin writes, the city under Nagin’s chief planner, Ed Blakely,

September 28, 2015 America 43 small activist army led by a former coda to his moving tale of trauma and poor managed to return; many more member of the Black Panthers. recovery, large swaths of that sprawl- did not. In any nonfiction narrative with a ing ward have abandoned houses like large cast, a small number stand out by a tropical ghost town. In the end, the JASON BERRY’s books include Up From the Cradle of Jazz and Render Unto Rome: virtue of what an author sees in them. people who made it back were the ones The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Rivlin manages the considerable feat with the means to do so. Some of the Church. of making a black banker and his wife, Alden and Rhesa McDonald, into FRANKLIN FREEMAN three-dimensional figures who capture an arc of New Orleans history since the civil rights era. Having never met A CREATIVE RING them, I found myself wondering what new surprise or revelation of person- THE FELLOWSHIP memoirs and letters.” Carpenter’s book ality would unfold each time they ap- The Literary Lives of the Inklings: is a good introduction to the subject; peared. J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen the Zaleskis’ book is for those who The couple lost their home in the Barfield, Charles Williams want to go deeper. New Orleans East suburb; McDonald By Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski One Inkling who thought threw himself into reconstructing Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 656p $35 Carpenter’s reconstruction of an banking records and got the business Inkling’s meeting was “surprisingly suc- back into service. He practiced lending The last major work about the cessful” was Owen Barfield, who had a to reliable, often working-class clients Inklings, the group of Oxford writers lesser role in Carpenter’s book. In The on careful terms. When the 2008 hous- centered around C. S. Lewis and J. R. Fellowship he comes into his own and ing bubble broke, few of his clients suf- R. Tolkien, (there has been a pleth- shows that the Inklings, traditionally fered; he had avoided subprime loans. ora of minor works, thought of as a Christian When the actor Brad Pitt, who has most not worth read- group, allowed for other a large house in the French Quarter, ing, in my opinion) was philosophies; they were sank several million dollars into the Humphrey Carpenter’s more about friendship Make It Right project to build houses The Inklings: C. S. than about a literary of cutting-edge architecture in a dev- Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, program (though they astated Lower Ninth Ward area, the Charles Williams, and did, loosely, have one). banker broods. McDonald appreciat- Their Friends (1978). For Barfield was an an- ed that the utility bills for one of Pitt’s This was a delightful throposophist, [a spir- Make It Right homes were a fraction book, well-told, trail- itual philosopher] and of what a resident would pay in a tra- ing scents of the very although he was bap- ditional home—a huge saving in the tobacco the Inklings, or tized as an Anglican in warm months. But the banker within most of them, smoked, middle age (partly, at couldn’t square the idea of spending a and the taste of the least, to please his wife, few hundred thousand dollars to build beer and port they im- who detested his an- a home that would be worth half that bibed. The Zaleskis— throposophy), he always amount on the open market. “He had Philip Zaleski is the editor of the Best reverenced Rudolf Steiner as perhaps the money to put a lot more people in Spiritual Writing and Best American the “key thinker” in the history of con- homes,” McDonald said. Spiritual Writing series; Carol Zaleski sciousness. Rivlin, the reporter ever searching is a professor of world religions at The latter is what Barfield was in- for balance, then quotes Malik Rahim, Smith College—have written a more terested in and what he wrestled with the ex-Black Panther and leader of scholarly book, plunging deeper into all his life. He fought in letters what Common Ground, who considers Pitt the philosophies and lives of their sub- he and Lewis called “The Great War” “the hero of the Ninth Ward.... We jects, but they admit Carpenter’s recon- about anthroposophy, which Lewis re- couldn’t save it. But Brad Pitt, an actor, struction of an Inkling’s meeting, “the spected but considered deeply flawed. this white dude—did.” centerpiece of his entertaining 1978 Unlike Lewis and Tolkien, Barfield Well, a small part of the Ninth study The Inklings” is “vivid” albeit struggled as a writer and worked in Ward came back because of that white “rather a patchwork, assembled from his father’s law office most of his life, dude. And as Rivlin reminds us in the numerous published and unpublished not succeeding until late in life, when

44 America September 28, 2015 he became a popular lecturer in the Eliot,” (which will in itself cause more and the Beowulf poet; that they United States and an almost guru fig- teeth grinding among some Inkling’s have recovered archaic literary ure for people as different as the poet devotees), with what I think is a fair forms not as an antiquarian cu- Howard Nemerov and the Nobel- appraisal of the group: riosity but as a means of squarely winning novelist Saul Bellow. The addressing modern anxieties and Zaleskis include a fascinating section Literary revolutions leave many longings. From our present van- about the friendship between Barfield in their wake; but some of those tage point this looks like a signal and Bellow, which, on Bellow’s part, who excoriate the Inklings may and even unprecedented achieve- followed the typical path from ideal- come to see that Tolkien, Lewis, ment; but what permanent place ism to disillusionment. Barfield, Williams, and their as- the Inklings may come to occupy There is really nothing new in here sociates, by returning to the fun- in Christian renewal and, more about Lewis and Tolkien, the most damentals of story and explor- broadly, intellectual and artistic prominent Roman Catholic of the ing its relation to faith, virtue, history, is for the future to de- group, or at least nothing major. They self-transcendence, and hope, cide. were very close friends, and without have renewed a current that runs Lewis’s encouragement we might not through the heart of Western FRANKLIN FREEMAN writes from Saco, Me., have had The Lord of the Rings. Which literature, beginning with Virgil where he lives with his wife and four children. would have pleased, it appears, an- other Oxford scholar, also an Inkling and, ironically, along with Tolkien, a major player in Lewis’s conversion, Hugo Dyson, a disruptive force among the Inklings who, the Zaleskis imply, might have been a large factor in the break-up of the Thursday night meet- ings (although the Inklings’ Tuesday midday meetings at an Oxford pub, continued for many more years). Dyson is famous among Inklings fans for loathing Tolkien’s work and bel- lowing, “Not another f—g elf!” when he saw Tolkien pulling manuscript pages from his overcoat. The Zaleskis do a fine job toning down some of the sentimental excess- es of some Inklings’ fans and perhaps, at times, Carpenter. They quote Max Beerbohm about his disappointment with Oxford (“Here, in a riot of vul- garity, were remnants of beauty”) and do not flinch from portraying Charles Williams’s sadomasochistic (think: CLASSIFIED WANT YOUR AD HERE? Visit americamagazine.org. ruler and bottom) yet “platonic” out- Email: [email protected]. ings with “followers.” Clothing Call 212-515-0102. Baptism garments and Nativity sets from They end their book, after a glance at Ten-word minimum. Rates are per word per issue. 1-5 Bethlehem. Allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery; the “grinding of teeth” with which some times: $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28. America’s Web site www.GuliGifts.com. thinkers, notably Germaine Greer and for one week. The flat rate for a Web-only classified ad is $150 for 30 days. Philip Pullman, treat the Inklings, and admitting that “the Inklings never achieved the formal brilliance of the America (ISSN 000-7049) is published weekly (except for 13 combined issues: Jan. 5-12, 19-26, April 13-20, May 25-June 1, June 8-15, 22-29, July 6-13, 20-27, Aug. 3-10, 17-24, Aug. 31-Sept. 7, Dec. 7-14, 21-28) by America Press Inc., 106 West 56th greatest of their contemporaries, such Street, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Circulation: (800) 627- 9533. Subscription: United States $69 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $69 per as Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov, Borges, or year for international priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to: America, P.O. Box 293159, Kettering, OH 45429.

September 28, 2015 America 45 THE WORD Little Children of the Word TWENTY-SEVENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B), OCT. 4, 2015 Readings: Gn 2:18–24; Ps 128:1–6; Heb 2:9–11; Mk 10:2–16 “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mk 10:15)

n his teaching on divorce, Jesus the beginning of creation.” but of the fallen world. Jesus “was in- claims that the circumstances that It is true, of course, that we do not dignant” with the disciples, saying “Let I allowed for divorce in the Mosaic live in the Garden of Eden now. Every the little children come to me; do not law were due to the “hardness of heart” sin of our own wayward hearts, every stop them; for it is to such as these that of human beings after the fall. These sign of sin and destruction in the world the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I laws were conditional, Jesus says, not makes that obvious to us all. And yet tell you, whoever does not receive the God’s intent “from the beginning of Jesus tells us that the conditions have kingdom of God as a little child will creation.” Jesus cites passages from changed. TheEndzeit has been inau- never enter it.” Genesis that reflect the human con- gurated with the coming of What it means to “receive the dition prior to the fall from Paradise. the kingdom, because kingdom of God as a little In the Garden, “God made them male the Messiah came to child” is surely complex. and female,” reflecting Gn 1:27, with live among us and to Or is it? Is Jesus’ point the intent that “a man leaves his father allow us to follow his that as little children ac- and his mother and clings to his wife, way, established by cept Jesus, and the ways and they become one flesh” (Gn 2:24). Jesus to bring “many of God, with vulnerability, In his teaching on marriage, there- children to glory…for openness, freedom, inno- fore, Jesus is directing us to the begin- the one who sanctifies and ning, what is called in German theolo- those who are sanctified all have one PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE gy the Urzeit, the time prior to human Father. For this reason Jesus is not sin. What are the grounds for Jesus’ ashamed to call them brothers and Not just marriage, but many relationships statement that his followers are once sisters.” Jesus, our brother, has come can break down because of our own fallen ways. How can we, by allowing ourselves again in the time of the beginning? to bring us to our true, native home, to be transformed, help to restore our What are the signs that it is Paradise but also to show us how we must relationships? How can we become like now? Jesus himself, the Word made live there. “little children” as we grow in the ways of the kingdom? flesh, “who for a little while was made The pathway home was not ob- A. DUNNE TAD ART: lower than the angels,” is the sign. vious to Jesus’ first disciples, who The German biblical scholar Lutz asked Jesus “again about this matter” of cence, guilelessness, not to gain any- Doering writes that in Jesus’ teaching marriage and divorce. Jesus instructed thing, not to calculate wins and losses, “what we encounter…is a model of res- them further regarding these things, but simply to accept the kingdom for toration of paradisiacal conditions in but one might argue he instructs them what it is, so we must accept the king- the kingdom of God, an Urzeit-Endzeit more significantly by indicating the dom? If we are being taken back to correlation” (158). For with Jesus comes change of heart necessary to enter the the Urzeit, to Paradise restored in the the inauguration of the kingdom of kingdom and to live according to the Endzeit, then we are being taken to God, the beginning of the eschaton, or ways of the kingdom. The kingdom is a time of primal innocence, in which Endzeit, when God will make all things about transformation, about conver- the love of the other, in marriage as new. It is only with the coming of the sion of intellect, heart and soul. well as all of our other relationships, is Messiah that we can hope to be trans- At the end of the discourse about grounded in God’s perfection. Surely formed into people of the kingdom, marriage and divorce, the disciples none of us is perfect now; but the capable of following God’s intent “from want to send away people who were kingdom calls for transformation, to bringing children to Jesus, “and the become like a “little child,” and the one JOHN W. MARTENS is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn. disciples spoke sternly to them.” This, who calls us will surely bring us home. Twitter: @BibleJunkies. however, is not the way of the kingdom JOHN W. MARTENS

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